The Bible Go 



■ar' 






I 



I ! 










V 




Class DQ Dn 

Book JVX_ 

Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




PROFESSOR NEWTON WRAY 



=■• 



Some plain words about Higher Criticism 

BY 
NEWTON WRAY, A. B.. D. D. . 

Professor of Theology, Bible History and Ethics. 

Author of Church Finance, a Twentieth Century 

Message to the Churches; The Lodge, a Counterfeit; 

Holiness and the Greek Tongue. 




THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS CO. 
CHICAGO .... ILLINOIS 






Copyright, 1916 

BY 

The Christian Witness Co. 




JUN 29l9i6 



©CI.A431669 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 
I. A Portentous Situation. Old and new methods 
of attack upon Revelation. How the way is pre- 
pared for the popular acceptance of the higher 
critical theories. Critical concessions 13 

II. The Perversion of Sunday School Literature 
to the Service of Higher Criticism. An insidious 
propaganda. The "development" theory. The 
critical animus. Supposed proof of post-Mosaic 
authorship. Difficulties. Archaeology. Dr. 
Kuyper 25 

III. Hostility to Revelation. Reason for the zeal of 
critics. False conception of the literature of the 
Bible. Proof of hostility. Supernatural inspira- 
tion denied. New Testament refutation. Hotbeds 
of the critical propaganda. Example. Forsyth. 
Christ assailed. Bearing of critical view of O. T. 
narratives on the New. Torrey on Smith 45 

IV. Requisites for the Quest of Truth. Reply to 
Shailer Mathews. Primary elements. Sincerity. 
Moller. Wiener's charge. Incident in proof 61 

V. Requisites, Continued — Objectivism, and General 
Culture. Subjectivism. Scriptures not allowed 
to speak for themselves. Application to secular 
literature. Prof. Mead's refutation. Goethe's 
Faust. Lowell and Macaulay. Importance of 
general culture 73 

VI. Requisites, Continued — Higher Criticism Exposed 
in the Light of Common Sense. The Bible and 
a square deal. Bible demands unique treatmert. 
Fatal lack in the critics. Ignorance of the rudi- 
ments of Christ. Clarke's "use" (or abuse) of 
the Scriptures 87 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter Pag* 
VII. Requisites, Continued — More Common Sense. 
Lay sense against the critics. Argument from 
probability. Incredible situations. Wellhausen's 
venture. History falsified. Priority of priestly 
legislation. Argument from non-observance of 
law 99 

VIII. Requisites, Continued — Common Sense Again. 
Can there be honest forgeries? Implications. 
Test of this tree. Problems of the hour and an 
emasculate Bible. New Testament without an 
explanation. Spiritual decline. Social demorali- 
zation. Remedy 117 

IX. Ethical Perversions of Higher Criticism. Loss 
of the ethical sense. Perversion of the conscience. 
Liberty of thought confounded with indifference 
to contract. Treason to Christ. The Church's 
duty. Critical admissions 136 

X. Fruit of Higher Criticism and the New Theol- 
ogy. Critical propaganda working death. The 
Church on the sociological switch. Statistics. 
Low views and loose conduct. Loss of reverence. 
A barren ministry. The evil in mission lands 146 

XI. "Back to Christ." A false watchword. The 
obligation involved. Pauline theology fully estab- 
lished 157 

XII. Darkening Counsel by Words Without Knowl- 
edge. Lyman Abbott's editorial on the Virgin 
Birth. Reply. Defence of New Testament record. 
Prof. Orr's argument 163 

XIII. A Disparaged Christ: His Person. The map of 
revelation. Necessity of a true Christology. How 
Christ is disparaged. Effect of such teaching 181 

XIV. A Disparaged Christ: His Atonement. How the 
denial of His deity affects His death. What fixes 
the meaning of this fact. Problem of sin. Justice 
and conscience. Not an example but a Saviour. 
How His sufferings possess infinite value, ,..,,,. 189 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter Paff* 
XV. A Disparaged Christ: His Power. A serious 
reflection on the character and work of Christ. 
Holiness not an arbitrary requirement. The par- 
don aspect of Christianity not its convincing 
credential 201 

XVI. A Disparaged Christ: His Authority. The de- 
cisive point. Jesus on trial. The fallible Christ 
of higher criticism. The Kenosis. The seal of 
truth. Daniel. Jonah. Anti-Christ the end of 
such treatment of Christ. 209 

XVII. The Indispensable Christ. How thoughtful scep- 
tics have been disillusioned. Prof. Romane's con- 
version. Scientists. A voice from the land of 
rationalism. Other examples 231 



INTRODUCTION 



A half century ago infidels sat in the back room 
of bar-rooms, cursing the Bible and blaspheming 
the Christ, over bottles of whiskey and mugs of 
beer. The coarseness and profanity of their atti- 
tude toward all things sacred, largely neutralized 
the danger of their teaching and influence. They 
were looked upon by thoughtful people as the 
enemies of everything that contributed to the up- 
lift and betterment of society. 

During the last few decades infidelity has 
changed its tactics, and undertakes to be con- 
ciliatory in its attitude toward the Bible and the 
Church of Christ. It no longer proposes a frontal 
attack upon the Word of God, but undertakes to 
make its home within the Church, and, while 
posing as friendly to the truth, to undermine the 
foundations of faith. 

The most dangerous enemies to the Church of 
Christ and that evangelical faith which saves the 
souls of men, are to be found today in colleges and 
universities supposed to be Christian institutions, 
and worse still, not a few unbelievers whose 
teachings are not so brutal and blasphemous as 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION 

that of Voltaire and Tom Paine, but are just as 
fatal to those who follow them, are found in our 
pulpits. In view of this condition of things, which 
has led to the deceiving and hurt of a great num- 
ber of people, the present volume is most oppor- 
tune. The author, Rev. Newton Wray, is thor- 
oughly qualified for the task which he has 
undertaken. The following pages will reveal the 
fact that he has been a close student of the best 
critics of the Old and New Testaments, and has 
been able to enumerate a large number of devout 
and scholarly men, who after the most diligent 
research, are rooted and grounded in their faith 
in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. 

Many of the destructive critics write as if they 
had sources of information, or opportunities for 
research exclusively their own. They also write 
as if all scholars were in harmony with their 
theories of unbelief. In considering the destruc- 
tive critics, it is well for us to remember that 
spiritual things are spiritually discerned; that 
mere human intellect, befogged and blinded, with 
carnality, cannot discern, understand or interpret 
the things of God. Professor Wray has great ad- 
vantage in this particular ; he has not only enjoyed 
the privileges of the schools, and the advantages 
of years of careful and discriminating research, 
but he is also a devout and earnest Christian, 



INTRODUCTION 3 

enjoying* that peculiar influence and illumination 
of the Holy Spirit which gives help and wisdom 
in the understanding of inspired truth, which 
cannot be obtained elsewhere. 

We most heartily commend this book to Chris- 
tians and thoughtful persons everywhere. We 
feel sure that its careful perusal will stimulate the 
faith and the better equip all believers to defend 
themselves successfully against the theories and 
fallacies of modern destructive criticism. 

Rev. H. C. Morrison, D. D., 
President of Asbury College. 



SUMMARY OF HIGHER CRITICISM 

1. "Disputing the Mosaic origin and authen- 
ticity of the Pentateuch. 

2. Advancing the Post-exile theory of the 
Levitical system. 

3. Discrediting the Historical narrative and 
inventing the mythical theory. 

4. Questioning the existence of any properly 
predictive element. 

5. Advocating rationalistic views of Old 
Testament inspiration. 

6. Attacking the authenticity and authority of 
the Fourth Gospel. 

7. Denying New Testament unity of doctrine, 
and favoring schools, such as Pauline, Petrine, 
Johannean. 

8. Modifying the previous views of the office 
and objects of Scripture. 

9. Advancing the Kenosis theory of the self 
emptying of Christ ; and hence 

10. Impugning His omniscience, infallibility 
and essential Deity. 



n. Doubting if not denying his miraculous 
incarnation and resurrection. 

12. Eliminating all that is distinctly super- 
natural in prophecy and miracle. 

Thus step by step criticism has advanced from 
the outposts to the very centre of the Christian 
system, as though satanic malice were behind the 
whole movement, deliberately planning to wreck 
all faith of disciples in the Bible as a Divine book, 
and the final arbiter of truth and duty." — 
Dr. A. T. Piers on. 



FOREWORD 

Some months ago the author of this volume 
discussed certain aspects of higher criticism in 
the periodical of which he was associate editor. 
Yielding to the request of friends who desired to 
see the discussion in a form suitable for wider 
circulation, he has consented to the publication 
of the original papers with such additional matter 
as might enhance the value of the publication. 

That such a discussion is vital to the Christian 
:taith goes without saying. If our religion is 
founded upon a fallible Bible, we have nothing 
more than a human system of ethics. That which 
gives vitality and power to Christian ethics is the 
supernatural life which inheres only in a super- 
natural revelation. "The words that I speak unto 
you, they are spirit and they are life." Our "faith 
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of 
God." But if the Sacred Record be historically 
disputable, and the Word of God be not divinely 
inspired, there is nothing to create and sustain a 
saving faith. Hence the necessity of heeding the 
apostolic injunction to "contend earnestly for the 

9 



10 Must the Bible Go 

faith which was once for all delivered unto the 
saints." 

It may be said, it is enough to preach the Gos- 
pel ; get people saved and they will not be troubled 
with modern forms of unbelief. That is true. 
But people will get saved only by a miraculous 
religion and this will not survive the critical proc- 
esses that question the validity of the Record and 
raise up a generation of higher critics in the 
Church. I am reminded of an old farmer's state- 
ment when told how to protect his fruit trees 
from rabbits. He said he had always found an 
excellent way to protect them was to "kill off the 
rabbits." It would avail nothing to have sound 
trees and condition a healthy flow of sap, if 
the rabbits barked them. Higher criticism de- 
stroys the bark through which the sap of Chris- 
tianity flows. 

I feel how incomplete and inadequate to the 
situation is this presentation of the subject; but it 
is hoped some suggestions have been offered 
that will convince readers of the import- 
ance of the issues at stake and of the need of 
the Church being awakened to what is going on 
under the name of scholarship in some of her in- 



Must the Bible Go 11 

stitutions and pulpits. I cannot but regret the 
conspiracy of silence or lack of moral courage on 
the part of the editors of leading church papers 
who witness these assaults upon the integrity of 
the Holy Scriptures without a word of protest. 

The author has been gratified by the assurance 
of brethren in the ministry that his effort has been 
helpful. One minister wrote : "I have been hav- 
ing glorious success in revival meetings and as- 
cribe much to the help I have obtained from your 
able defence of the old faith." It is hoped that 
in this form it will accomplish further good. 

THE AUTHOR. 

Taylor University, January, 1916, 



13 MVWS THB BlBLB Qo 



"There is no reason to believe that the Teutonic 
rebellion of this century against the Divine truths 
entrusted to the Semites will ultimately meet with 
more success than the Celtic insurrection of the 
preceding age. Both have been sustained by the 
highest intellectual gifts that human nature has 
ever displayed ; but when the tumult subsides the 
Divine truths are found to be not less prevalent 
than before, and simply because they are Divine. 
Man brings to the study of the oracles more learn- 
ing and more criticism than of yore ; and it is well 
that it should be so. The documents will yet bear 
a greater amount both of erudition and exami- 
nation than they have received, but the Word of 
God is eternal, and will survive the spheres." 
— Lord Beaconsfield. 

"The supreme danger of the Christian religion 
comes not from outside, but from within. No 
attack of a merely unimaginative materialism 
could so undermine and totter this heavenly edi- 
fice as the inclination of those inside to sponge 
away from its interior walls the ancient testimony 
of a divine origin." — Harold Begbie. 



CHAPTER I. 
A PORTENTOUS SITUATION. 

There was never a time when the encroach- 
ments of unbelief upon the domain of faith called 
for more serious attention than now. There have 
been times when unbelief was undisguised, when 
its attacks were coarse and brutal and those who 
were "set for the defence and confirmation of the 
truth" were forearmed by the very method of 
attack. Under such conditions, the foes of Bible 
truth could secure no solid advantage. The cit- 
adel of faith remained unshaken because its de- 
fenders recognized the character of these foes and 
repulsed them with the weapons of inspiration. 
The strength of its position lay in the fact that 
the common mind was uncorrupted by error in 
the guise of truth and was therefore strong in the 
consciousness of a supernatural Faith, while the 
unholy distinction of opposing that Faith belonged 
to a few open enemies of the Cross. 

The situation has completely changed. The 
evil that threatens the life of the Church is not, 

13 



14 Must the Bible Go 

as aforetime, the bold, dastardly denial of Revela- 
tion but the subtle teaching that professes to be 
evangelical, yet, on the ground of harmonizing the 
Bible with modern thought, reconstructs it upon 
principles and by methods that take away an infalli- 
ble guide and leaves us a religion of uncertainty. It 
is the tentative, homeopathic way in which higher 
critical suggestions are introduced into Sunday 
School literature or passed on by the concessions 
of the pulpit and the religious press, thus grad- 
ually weakening the conviction that the Scriptures 
are reliable and preparing the Church to modify 
its views regarding them. It is, in short, not the 
open repudiation of the doctrine that the Scrip- 
tures are inspired and constitute a revelation 
from God, attested by miracle, but the adoption 
and plausible setting forth by professed evan- 
gelicals, of views that logically tend to such a 
repudiation, which forms the gravest peril to the 
existence of a vital, powerful faith. It is the 
silent, steady intrusion of these views into the lit- 
erature and teaching of the church through which 
they filter down into the common mind, dimming 
its vision of the spiritual and eternal, and threat- 
ening the extinction of a miracle-working religion 



Must the Bible Go 15 

in the church, that calls for vigorous, concerted 
resistance on the part of those who would have the 
church maintain its character as a Divine institu- 
tion resting on a Supernatural Book and invested 
with superhuman power, instead of lapsing into 
the state of a mere human organization with 
Christian form and social functions. 

As an instance of how the way is prepared for 
the acceptance of the higher critical theories con- 
cerning the Bible, take the assumption that the 
world's scholarship advocates these theories. If 
this were so, it would not be conclusive of their 
truth. It was Cicero who said that no theory is 
too absurd for some philosophers to support. The 
world by wisdom knew not God, and it is no more 
competent from the intellectual view-point to de- 
cide how He would reveal Himself to men. It is 
possible, therefore, that scholars reasoning from 
false premises, or partial premises, might reach 
an erroneous conclusion as to the form of a reve- 
lation, and the error would be none the less error, 
though it would be more potent for evil, because 
of unanimity of opinion. 

But it is not true that the only scholarship de- 
serving the name supports the hypotheses of 



16 Must the Bible Go 

higher criticism. There are a few men in great 
repute as scholars who advocate them ; and they 
are, with scarcely an exception, prejudiced against, 
if not bitterly hostile to, the claim of the Holy 
Scripture to be the product of Divine inspiration. 
There are a great many weak imitators of the few 
referred to — mere echoes of stronger voices, now 
filling the Church with their empty and misleading 
reverberations. Of this sort we may mention 
the case of the Rev. Dr. Geo. P. Mains, one of 
the publishing agents of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church who uses his official position to pro- 
pagate higher criticism throughout the Church 
by means of a volume of which he is the author 
and the Methodist Book Concern, the publishers. 
In this volume occur the assertions, "It is clear, 
say our modern authorities, that he (Moses) could 
not have been the author of this book (Deuter- 
onomy). For reasons equally convincing, it is 
evident that the book must be the product of a 
period or periods far later than that of Moses." 
Observe the echo-like character of these asser- 
tions (indicated by my italic type) which are 
calculated to produce the impression that nothing 



Must the Bible Go 17 

convincing can be said on the other side of this 
question. For calm, self-assuring dogmatism, for 
unblushing self-conceit, this assumption is without 
a parallel. By claiming everything, the higher 
critics evidently expect to save something. But 
the game will not succeed, except with those who 
are influenced by the shadow of a name and receive 
assumption as argument. How do Dr. Mains' as- 
sertions, which are common with higher critics, 
sound in the presence of such scholars as the 
Scotch giant, Prof. James Orr, whose book, The 
Problem of the Old Testament, conclusively re- 
futes the critics ; Prof. James Robertson of whose 
work, The 'Religion of Israel, the German Dillman 
said that it hits the nail on the head, and which is 
valuable for its constructive character ; Prof. Wil- 
liam Henry Green, one of the most learned schol- 
ars America ever produced, whose books The 
Unity of Genesis, and The Higher Criticism of the 
Pentateuch meet and answer the critics at every 
turn ; Prof. Willis Beecher whose Reasonable Bib- 
lical Criticism is an example of its own title as well 
as an exposure of the unreasonable criticism we 
deplore. Space will not permit mention of all who 
have fully disproved the radical critical contention. 



18 Must the Bible Go 

Special mention must be made of Wiener, the able, 
scholarly Jew of London, England, whose pub- 
lished works and articles occasionally appearing 
in the Bibliotheca Sacra Quarterly, make mince- 
meat of higher criticism, leaving nothing solid or 
substantial in its arguments. The appearance of 
this champion of Moses and the Prophets has smit- 
ten the critics with confusion. With him agree 
Troelstra, the Dutch successor of Kuenen at Ley- 
den, Dahse of Germany, and others. The work of 
these scholars has put a new phase on Old Tes- 
tament criticism and compelled the admission 
from certain critics that it has cast a cloud of un- 
certainty over their hypothesis. Has Dr. Mains 
ever heard of them ? 

In the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1914, 
Dahse, writing on "Is the Documentary Theory 
Tenable ?" refers to three important admissions. 
He says : "In Germany, in England and America, 
leading members of the prevailing school have 
either abandoned important positions held by the 
higher critics or adopted the methods of the tex- 
tual critics." It was by these methods that Wiener 



Must the Bible Go 19 

and Dahse showed the untenableness of the Docu- 
mentary Theory. 

The first admission cited is by Hugo Gressman. 
Dahse says : "In Germany Hugo Gressman has 
published his work 'Mose und seine Zeit.' Accord- 
ing to this Moses is the founder of the Israelitish 
religion; out of the organic development of his 
work sprung the works of the great prophets ; they 
are heirs of Moses, without whom they could not 
have accomplished what they did ; the Red Sea in- 
cident is an historical event which was an occular 
demonstration to the Israelites of the absolute su- 
premacy of Jahweh over the gods of the Egyp- 
tians. The religion of Jahweh, which Moses in- 
troduced, is a thoroughly moral religion. Through 
the services of Moses the sphere of justice was for 
the first time embodied in the domain of religion 
on Israelitish soil, thus creating the firm founda- 
tion for the future nature of the state. The stories 
of Genesis emanate, in their original form, from 
pre-Mosaic times; those of the books of Exodus, 
Leviticus, and Numbers, extend in their oldest 
parts in the time of Moses ; indeed they rare, per- 
haps, in part, still older. Concerning the Deca- 
logue, Gressman not only considers a Mosaic con- 



20 Must the Bible Go 

ception of it possible, but even asserts that the 
Decalogue of Exodus XX was the catechism of 
the Hebrews in Mosaic times." Gressman is also 
shown to admit the force of the textual argument 
against the Documentary Theory. 

The second admission cited by Dahse is by Dr. 
S. Skinner, an advanced higher critic, whose long 
discussion of Dahse's book in the Expositor 
"shows that nevertheless it has gradually become 
clear to the representatives of higher criticism 
that they must, nolens volens, right themselves in 
regard to the materials for textual criticism of- 
fered by Mr. H. M. Wiener, myself, and others." 
Dr. Skinner "finds himself compelled to empha- 
size the fact that he is 'far from thinking that the 
last word has been said about the problem of the 
LXX and its bearing on the history of the Hebrew 
text. Dahse's work has made it impossible for 
critics to treat that problem lightly, and has set a 
high standard of accuracy and thoroughness to 
those who shall attempt it ;' 'that confidence in the 
results of critical analysis must be seriously 
shaken ;' and 'we must frankly acknowledge that 
the trustworthiness of the Hebrew text in its 



Must the Bible Go 21 

transmission of the divine names calls for more 
thorough investigation than it has yet received at 
the hands of critical scholars/ " 

The third admission is that of Professor Julius 
A. Bewer, who, in his article, "The Composition 
of the Judges, Chaps. 17, 18," published in the 
American Journal of Semitic Languages (July, 
1913), "employs in reference to the book of 
Judges, the same rules which the textual critics 
would like to see employed with regard to the 
Pentateuch. There he states : 'Now it may be set 
down as a working principle of literary criticism, 
or, if not as a principle, at least as a reasonable de- 
mand, that the theory of a compilation of two 
parallel versions in a given story should be re- 
sorted to only when the other theory fails which 
tries to overcome the difficulties by means of text- 
ual criticism, by the discovery and excision of 
glosses and interpolations, and by the emendation 
of corruptions, and when there are clear and con- 
vincing evidences of two originally distinct 
versions/ " The conclusion reached from dealing 
with this portion of scripture according to the 
principle stated, is : "Through the severest process 
of literary criticism these chapters have come, 



22 Must the Bible Go 

various critical theories have proved inadequate, 
and now at the end of the process we may con- 
fidently regard them as a unity." 

Well does Dahse say, regarding Prof. Bewer's 
reasoning: "Would not the same investigator 
arrive at the same conclusions if he investigated 
the Pentateuch in the same manner, just as inde- 
pendently and without prejudice ? At any rate, he 
has, with this extremely praiseworthy article on 
The Composition of Judges, chaps. 17, 18/ made 
from within the first breach in the fortress of 
higher criticism." 

The decline of the speculative Old Testament 
criticism in Europe is apparent to unprejudiced 
observers. Professor Orr told the author several 
years ago that a strong reaction against the higher 
criticism was under way. Eerdmans, a pupil of 
Kuenen, in the preface to his Die Komposition der 
Genesis, writes: "I renounce the Graf-Kuenen- 
Wellhausen school and altogether oppose the so- 
called Newer Documentary Hypothesis." And 
Moller, at one time an adherent of Wellhausen, 
says: "After my studies which reach back over 



Must the Bible Go 23 

more than a decade, I am strongly of the im- 
pression that it is more correct to inquire what 
single passages are not from Moses than to give 
back to him a broken fragment here and there/' 



M Musi the Bible Go 



"It is surprising that the modern critics should 
not realize that the theory they are asserting is 
absolutely destructive of the whole Jewish re- 
ligion. . . . The critical hypothesis, as it at pres- 
ent stands, assumes that the Jewish national con- 
sciousness was deliberately and successfully falsi- 
fied, and that what the Jews have always believed 
to be the beginning of their religious life was 
really the end of it. I believe that this is both 
incredible and impossible." — Dean of Canterbury 
(Dr. Wace). 

"A revelation of God that contains all kinds 
of error is an absurdity." — Prof. Bettex, The 
Bible, God's Word. 

"The more I investigate Semitic antiquity, the 
more I am impressed with the utter baselessness 
of the view of Wellhausen." — (Fr. Hommel). 



CHAPTER II 

THE PERVERSION OF SUNDAY SCHOOL 

LITERATURE TO THE SERVICE 

OF HIGHER CRITICISM 

I have referred to the subtle manner in which 
the advocates of higher criticism are seeking to 
inculcate and spread throughout the church its 
radical theories, and adduced the assumption that 
"modern authorities'' have established the truth 
of these theories, thus virtually stigmatizing the 
contrary or traditional view as a mark of ignor- 
ance or of inability to reason correctly in a discus- 
sion of this kind. If we questioned the sincerity 
of the assumption, we should use the language of 
the day and call it a "bluff;" but we make no such 
charge and content ourselves with the statement 
that men who make this claim think the new views 
should be taught and prepare the way for a hear- 
ing by creating the impression that the best 
scholarship is on that side of the question. We feel 
that this claim, though made in good faith by 
some, is unfair to the opposing view and absolutely 

25 



26 Must the Bible Go 

groundless, and I mentioned certain names that 
stand for the high water-mark of scholarship in 
support of the conservative position. This list 
could have been extended had it been considered 
necessary. 

I now direct attention to how the Sunday 
Schools are being doped with the poison of higher 
criticism. When Prof. George Adam Smith was 
in this country he said in a minister's meeting: 
"Well, now, we have learned how to preach from 
the pulpit according to the new criticism ; we must 
wait for some genius to arise to teach us how to 
impart it to the children." I do not know of any 
genius who has arisen to the task, but a number 
of editors and writers of Sunday School lesson 
helps have undertaken to supply this deficiency. 
In some instances the method of doing this is very 
cautious and guarded, the most plausible state- 
ments making the new viewpoint appear entirely 
reasonable, while the logical end of the teaching 
does not appear. An article in the Sunday School 
Journal discussing the Divine Human Character 
of the Bible and Moses and the Pentateuch will 
illustrate this remark. Speaking of the forma- 
tion of a national literature from popular beliefs 



Must the Bible Go 27 

and traditions, the writer says : "To this rule of 
gradual development the literature of the Hebrew 
people, preserved for us in the Old Testament, 
while in a very definite and exalted sense inspired 
of God, will be found to form no exception." 

The theory of "gradual development" is a 
favorite one with higher critics, but as under- 
stood by the founders and leading exponents of 
the system it does not consist with a just and 
adequate interpretation of the Scriptures as the 
inspired and authoritative revelation of God. 
As Professor Orr says: "The guiding idea of 
the critical school is no longer revelation, but 
evolution." Development in the sense of a pro- 
gressive revelation is true to fact, for God 
revealed Himself with ever-increasing clear- 
ness from Moses to the prophets, until, with His 
manifestation in the flesh, was poured forth the 
fulness of grace and truth. But this is very 
different from the theory that denies to the Scrip- 
tures the unique distinction they claim for them- 
selves as a system of revealed truth with a histori- 
cal setting framed by special supernatural inter- 
positions. The animus of higher criticism is 
positively anti-supernatural. It reduces the his- 



28 Must the Bible Go 

tory of Israel to the level of a development from 
mythical fancies and crude attempts to solve the 
mystery of existence and does not hesitate to char- 
acterize the Old Testament narrative as mislead- 
ing and so jumbled as to need entire reconstruc- 
tion. Witness the following declaration from 
Prof. Cornill's "Prophets of Israel:" 'The Israel- 
itish narrative, as it lies before us in the books of 
the Old Testament gives a thoroughly one-sided, 
and, in many respects, incorrect, picture of the pro- 
fane history, and on the other hand an absolutely 
false representation of the religious history of the 
people, and has thus made the discovery of the 
truth well-nigh impossible." Observe, to repro- 
duce Prof. Willis J. Beecher's comment on this 
statement, "Dr. Cornill does not say that the Old 
Testament writers may here and there have in- 
advertently made a mistake or that there may be 
elements of fiction or of figure of speech in the 
Scriptures, which men have mistaken for literal 
fact. What he says is that the secular history is 
exceedingly untrustworthy, while the religious 
history is utterly false." 

Such is the position of men who sound the key- 
note for the whole orchestra of higher criticism; 



Must the Bible Go 29 

and I charge that articles like the one under re- 
view exert an unwholesome influence in training 
people to join in the chorus. When the writer 
says of Moses, 'To him must be traced the origin 
and formulation of many customs and institutions 
from which the later national system of worship 
and ritual developed," he encourages belief in the 
critical reconstruction of the narrative which Prof. 
Cornill declares is wholly unreliable, a reconstruc- 
tion which implies, if it does not positively state, 
that "the national system of worship and ritual" is 
an invention of later times imposed on the credu- 
lity of people who revered the memory of Moses. 
To say nothing of the inconsistency of such an 
idea with a true definition of development, it is 
destructive of confidence in the trustworthiness of 
the Bible narratives. "These teach Abraham was 
a monotheist ; that he became possessed with the 
idea that he and his descendants were to be 
Jehovah's own people, chosen that all mankind 
might be blessed in them ; that Moses gave form to 
the institutions of the Abrahamic people, including 
civil laws and the ten commandments and an elab- 
orate ritual ; that God trained them afterward for 
centuries, giving them a succession of prophets to 



30 Must the Bible Go 

interpret to them His dealings ; that as a part of 
their training He scattered them among the 
nations ; that the great movement culminated and 
took a new departure in Jesus. One who substi- 
tutes for this an outline which is inconsistent with 
it at every point should be honest enough not to 
claim that he accepts the Scriptures as truthful/' 
—(Prof. Willis J. Beecher.) 

Dr. John Lord has truly remarked: "It fol- 
lows necessarily (from a denial that the Mo- 
saic code and the various deliverances of the 
Israelites were due to the direct agency of Je- 
hovah) that all the miracles by which the divine 
legation of Moses is supported and credited, have 
no firm foundation, and a belief in them is super- 
stitious — as indeed it is in all other miracles re- 
corded in the Scriptures, since they rest on testi- 
mony no more firmly believed than that believed 
by Christ and the apostles respecting Moses. 
Sweep away his authority as an inspiration, and 
you undermine the whole authority of the Bible; 
you bring it down to the level of all other books; 
you make it valuable only as a thesaurus of in- 
teresting stories and impressive moral truths, 
which we accept as we do all other kinds of 



Must the Bible Go 31 

knowledge, leaving us free to reject what we can- 
not understand or appreciate, or even what we 
dislike." — Jewish Heroes and Prophets. 

Observe how this Sunday School writer seeks to 
cloud the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. 
He refers to the fact that Moses is spoken of in the 
third person. This is not conclusive of another 
hand in the composition of these writings, since 
the habit of concealing their identity is common 
with the sacred historians. 

In point of fact Moses often spoke in the first 
person, as when he remonstrated with the people 
for their murmuring (Ex. 16:8) and when he re- 
hearsed the law in the plain of Moab. The very 
book (Deuteronomy) which is with the critics 
"the firm foundation on which they build their 
superstructure/' is almost wholly in the first per- 
son, as naturally it should be. In other books, 
where God Himself gives the Law and prescribes 
the ritual, Moses might well refer to himself in the 
third person. "All through the story," says Prof. 
W. H. Griffith Thomas, "God comes first with 
Aaron as the spokesman, Jethro as the adviser, 
and Joshua as the military leader ; the humility of 



32 Must the Bible Go 

the record concerning Moses is essentially true to 
life." 

Expressions and statements are mentioned as 
"clearly belonging to a later period than do the 
events which they describe." Thus the statement 
in Gen. 12:6 and 13:7 that "the Canaanite was 
then in the land," "could be made only in retro- 
spect by an author writing at a time when the 
Canaanites were no longer in possession." Another 
explanation is possible. It was doubtless the de- 
sign of the writer of that passage to show that 
the Canaanite was "then in the land" as well as 
now; that the settlement of Canaan by these na- 
tions took place before Abraham's migration. 

Gen. 36:31 is cited as an instance of a writer 
speaking of a time long past when he says : "And 
these are the kings that reigned in the land of 
Edom, before there reigned any king over the chil- 
dren of Israel." The implication is not necessary. 
Kings, according to promise were to descend from 
Abraham and Sarah and Israel, and are, in Deu- 
teronomy, anticipated (Gen. 17:6, 16; 35:11. 
Deut. 17:14, 15; 28:16). "If the author was a 
contemporary of Moses he would be interested in 
the fact that the fulfilling of this part of the 



Must the Bible Go 33 

promise had already begun in the Edomite 
branch of Abraham's family, although it had not 
yet begun in the Israelite branch; and he would 
use language accordingly/ ' 

The expressions "beyond the Jordan" (Deut. 
3:20, 25) and "as Israel did unto the land of his 
possession which Jehovah gave unto them,' , 
(Deut. 2:12) are also taken to mean that the 
writer's time and place were in Palestine, after its 
occupation by the Israelites. This position can be 
maintained only upon the ground that these chap- 
ters which form part of the discourse of Moses to 
Israel were rank forgeries. The first is the lan- 
guage of one east of the river who beseeches the 
Lord to permit him to cross over to the land "be- 
yond Jordan," i. e., to the west of it, and therefore 
reveals the folly of the critic rather than the inac- 
curacy of the record. Moses begins his personal 
address at the 6th verse of chapter 1 of Deuter- 
onomy. Verses 1-5 are introductory and may 
have been added by Moses himself before he de- 
livered the completed work to the custody of the 
Levites, as stated in Chap. 31 :24~26. Possibly he 
rehearsed the matter orally and afterwards com- 
mitted the whole to writing with this brief intro- 



34 Must the Bible Go 

duction in the third person — a thing not unknown 
in our own day where a writer modestly prepares 
the way for a quotation from himself. In that 
case, the phrase "on this side Jordan" (Rev. Ver. 
— "beyond Jordan" verse 5), would accord with 
the purpose of the book as a document of re- 
ligious instruction and reminiscence for the people 
after their settlement in the land. To those who 
insist upon a later hand for such statements we 
commend' Prof. Beecher's remark below. 

With respect to the other passage, it was per- 
fectly correct for Moses to compare the conquest 
which the children of Esau had made of the land 
they then dwelt in with the conquest which Israel 
had completed before this statement was made. 
See Deut. 3 :8-i8 : "the Lord your God hath given 
you this land to possess it." And this was part of 
the covenant territory (Gen. 15:18). 

This Sunday School writer is no more fortunate 
in his claim that the documentary hypothesis of 
the critics "clears up many incidental difficulties, 
such as the interchange of names in referring to 
the same places or persons;" e. g., Horeb and 
Sinai, where the Commandments were given; 
Jethro and Reuel, two names for Moses' father-in- 



Must the Bible Go 35 

law; Jehovah and Elohim (translated, Lord and 
God), to designate the Divine Being. This is a 
sample of the puerility of the critics who cannot 
imagine a reason why the same writer should use 
such names interchangeably. Perhaps they might 
think of a Westerner speaking of Mt. Tacoma at 
one time and Mt. Rainier (the same mountain) at 
another time. "Parallel and variant accounts of 
the same event," continues this writer, "such as 
occur in the Creation, Flood, and Joseph narra- 
tives are likewise accounted for by this interpreta- 
tion of the Bible record." That there are such 
accounts is an assumption and not an incontrovert- 
ible fact. The reasoning by which it is sought to 
establish the documentary hypothesis is saturated 
with subjectivism, superficial, and conclusive only 
to those who take their cue from the enemies of 
Revelation. The incapability of such men treating 
the Scriptures fairly will be noticed later. 

Other examples of isolated sentences might have 
been adduced by the writer in question, but they 
need not be referred to a later person than some 
contemporary of Moses, and they certainly do not 
warrant the radical and in some respects absurd 
hypothesis of higher criticism. The premise is too 



38 Must the Bible Go 

slight to support so huge a conclusion. In the last 
chapter of Deuteronomy it is said, "There hath 
not arisen a prophet since Israel like unto Moses. ,, 
No long interval of time may have occurred before 
the addition of this statement which was of the 
nature of an appendix to the writing of Moses. 
Says Prof. Beecher : "Forty years after the death 
of Abraham Lincoln people were already saying 
that we have not since had an American statesman 
like him'. Less than forty years after the death of 
Henry Ward Beecher and John B. Gough men 
were saying that there have arisen since no Eng- 
lish-speaking orators like them." Such instances, 
Prof. Beecher thinks, may be referred to the life 
time of Phinehas, grandnephew of Moses, who 
was associated with him in public affairs. "Men 
of the age of Phinehas may well have been the 
literary executors of Moses." 

That there are difficulties in the Scriptures as 
they have come down to us none deny. But the 
right attitude is not that of one who seeks to ac- 
count for them by a reasoning that substitutes 
difficulty for absurdity and loads the Scriptures 
down with the suspicion of dishonesty, but that 
of him who waits for light, meantime believing in 



Must the Bible Go 37 

the trustworthiness of the record and doubting 
not, if light should come, the difficulty would 
vanish. Whenever light has come, it has always 
confirmed the old, never the new view. It is 
undeniable that every archaeological discovery has 
vindicated the sacred writings, as traditionally 
received, and compelled the critics to revise their 
propositions. 

1 Wherever archaeology has been able to test the 
negative conclusions of criticism/' says Prof. A. 
H. Sayce, in his Monument Facts and Higher 
Critical Fancies, "they have dissolved like a bubble 
into the air." This able scholar cites the original 
critical contention that the fourteenth chapter of 
Genesis was unhistorical. Some years later the 
critics were silent about this contention. "In the 
interval the excavator and archaeologist have been 
hard at work regardless of the most certainly as- 
certained results of criticism, and the ancient 
world of Western Asia has risen again from the 
grave of centuries. A history which had seemed 
lost forever has been recovered for us, and we can 
now handle and read the very letters which passed 
between the contemporaries of Abraham." And 
that history confirms the accuracy of the writer of 



38 Must the Bible Go 

that chapter of Genesis, "even the proper names 
having been handed down in the scriptural narra- 
tive with but little alteration/' The name Amra- 
phel was none other than that of the king who 
codified the Babylonian law, being identical with 
Khammu — or Ammu-rapi ilu, the Babylonian for 
Khammu-rapi the god. Ilu is the same as the 
Hebrew el for God. This king, "like others of his 
dynasty, claimed divine honors and was addressed 
by his subjects as a god." 

Among other instances of the triumph of archae- 
ology, Sayce mentions the two which were once 
fundamental to the critical theory. "That Baby- 
lonian law should have been already codified in 
the age of Abraham deprives the critical theory 
which makes the Mosaic law posterior to 
the Prophets of one of its two main sup- 
ports. The theory was based on two denials — that 
writing was used for literary purposes in the time 
of Moses, and that a legal code was possible before 
the period of the Jewish kings. The discovery of 
the Tel-el-Amarna tablets disproved the first as- 
sumption ; the discovery of the code of Khammu- 
rapi has disproved the second. Centuries before 
Moses, law had been already codified, and the 



Must the Bible Go 39 

Semitic populations had long been familiar with 

the conception of a code Not only could the 

Hebrew leader have compiled a code of laws, we 
now see that it would have been incredible had he 
not done so." 

Sir William Robertson Nicoll, reviewing a book 
written on the critical side, makes the striking re- 
mark: "The significant fact is that the great first- 
hand archaeologists, as a rule, do not trust the 
higher criticism. This means a great deal more 
than can be put on paper to account for their doubt. 
It means that they are living in an atmosphere 
where arguments that flourish outside do not 
thrive." 

When, therefore, we are asked to exchange the 
traditional for the higher critical view and are ex- 
pected to sanction the inculcation of its principles 
in the minds of the young, we reply in the noble 
language of Dr. Kuyper, the great Dutch scholar 
and theologian: 

"If, then, after all legitimate examination and 
explanation there still remain (in the text) seem- 
ing inexplicables, cruces interpretum, before 
which not I— for that implies nothing — but all 
confessing theologians stand, even then I do not 



40 Must the Bible Go 

hesitate a moment to say it in the hearing of the 
whole scientific world, that facing the choice be- 
tween leaving this question unanswered, and with 
the simple-minded people of God confessing my 
ignorance, or with the learned ethical brethren 
from scientific logicalness rejecting the infallibility 
of Scripture, I firmly choose the first, and with my 
whole soul shrink back from the last. 

"For to say with Rothe and his followers that 
there are myths of Scripture ; the creation narra- 
tive a pious phantasy ; phantasy likewise the nar- 
rative of the fall ; the prophecies are products of a 
higher-tensioned spiritual life; the testimonies 
borne by Christ and his apostles concerning the 
old covenant are devoid of normative power ; that 
the apostolic representations of the truth are 
equally little normative ; even the image of Christ 
which they outline and paint is not fixed reliably; 
and then solemnly to declare that the whole Scrip- 
ture, from Gen. i :i to Rv. 22:21, is the Word of 
God, is more than I can do ; it is too bold for me ; it 
looks wonderfully much like a protestatio actui 
contraria, which I hear of but of which I have no 
understanding. And when, moreover, I observe 
that in the circles of these 'faithful' ones the mod- 



Must the Bible Go 41 

ernizing vivisectors are widely known, and that, 
on the other hand, the orthodox champions of in- 
spiration — such as Gaussen not only, but also such 
men as Hodge and Philippi; yea, even Beck and 
Mehring — are scarcely known at all, then, in all 
seriousness, I am filled with apprehension for the 
future. Then I seem to hear the rushing waters ; 
and I feel the 'zeal of God' come over me which 
compels me to reject a Word of God/ so-called, 
which is fallible, as a contradictio in terminis, 
which exchanges fixedness of principle for half 
measures, and which, while ever going backward 
toward Christ, constantly separates itself but 
further from the 'Christ according to the 
Scripture/ 

"And should anyone still answer that, judging 
as I do, I, myself, am not justified, since I acknowl- 
edge errors, if not in the autographs, at least in 
the texts at our service ; then let me remove this 
latent objection by this other question ; whether, if 
you held in your hand a cup of pure gold, but whose 
edge is slightly damaged, and I held in my hand an 
entirely perfect cup of gold which is not real, you 
would say, It is all the same to me ; I will cheer- 



42 Must the Bible Go 

fully take your imitation for my gold cup*?" — 
Bibliotheca Sacra. 

Let him who will take the imitation and get 
what satisfaction he can out of it ; we shall not re- 
linquish the genuine cup, even though its edge 
seems to be slightly damaged, and we object to the 
substitution being made for those who are not 
prepared to speak for themselves. I charge that 
so-called Evangelicals who have become obsessed 
with the subjectivism of the Graflf-Wellhausen 
school of criticism would get people to exchange 
their golden treasure of sacred truth for the coun- 
terfeit product of this school, and I do not intend 
to remain silent while this attempt is being made. 



44 Must the Bible Go 



"The critics object to the Biblical theory that 
relies so much on the supernatural ; the character- 
istic feature of their own is the unnatural. The 
Biblical theory says there was a course of history 
quite unprecedented, or certainly most extraordi- 
nary; the modern theory says that the history 
was nothing remarkable, but there was quite an 
unprecedented mode of imagining and writing it. 
There have to be postulated miracles of a literary 
and psychological kind, which contradict sound 
reason and experience as much as any of the 
physical miracles of the Old Testament transcend 
them." — Prof. James Robertson, Early Religion 
of Israel 

"The proton pseudos (first lie), historically 
considered, of Graf, Kuenen, and all their fol- 
lowers, consists in this : that they make use of the 
variety of material afforded them for positively 
constructing a history of ancient Israel, only to 
destroy the possibility of such a history. This 
they appear to do, not so much because of the dis- 
crepancies which exist in the materials, as because 
of their predetermination to reject as untrust- 
worthy all the materials which partake largely of 
the Hebrew belief in the supernatural." — Ladd. 



CHAPTER III 
HOSTILITY TO REVELATION. 

The subjective explanation for the modern criti- 
cal views is hostility to supernaturalism. There is 
an irrepressible prejudice against the very concep- 
tion of a revelation with miraculous attestations. 
To quote Professor Sayce: "The presence of a 
miracle is of itself accounted a sufficient reason 
for suspecting the truth of a story, or at all events 
the credibility of its witnesses. If there was no 
record of miracles in the Old and New Testa- 
ments, it may be questioned whether so much zeal 
would have been displayed in endeavoring to 
throw doubt on the authenticity of their contents. 
We find no such display of critical energy in the 
case of the Mohammedan Koran." 

The fundamental conception of the critics (by 
whom I mean not those who claim to be evangeli- 
cal, but the originators of the school to which the 
former have become such blind devotees) is that 
the literature of the Bible, like any other literature, 
is only a natural development with no higher in- 

45 



46 Must the Bible Go 

spiration than human genius and no supernatural 
attestation. Of course, coming to the Bible with 
this bias, they could not treat the Bible fairly. It 
has not been allowed to speak for itself. The 
prejudice of the critic has been read into it, in the 
work of re-construction. Its most distinctive ele- 
ment — the supernatural — was eliminated to begin 
with, or relegated to the region of myth and alle- 
gory. How was it possible under these circum- 
stances to deal justly with the narratives? 
Prophecy as well as history has suffered mutila- 
tion by this subjective, irrational method. Since 
true prediction is a miracle, it is denied, in the 
unique sense the Scriptures claim for it, and re- 
solved into a flight of genius. Hence the novel 
theory held concerning some of the prophetical 
books. They must be assigned to a later date and 
thus accounted for by the principle, Vaticinia post 
eventum. 

A few quotations from leading critics will show 
that the charge of hostility to a Divine Revelation 
is true. According to Delitzsch, the two foregone 
conclusions of the higher criticism are "There is 
no true prophecy" and "There is no true miracle." 
Eichhorn, originator of the expression Higher 



Must the Bible Go 47 

Criticism, declared: "Miracles do not happen, 
They have never happened. We cannot accept 
any book as even historically true which contains 
narratives of alleged miraculous events." Dr. 
Milton S. Terry echoes the infidel strain : "Critical 
studies have dispelled the notion, once quite preva- 
lent, that the prophecies of the 1 d Testament and 
the New Testament Apocalypse ^re history writ- 
ten beforehand." Renan declared, "The exclusion 
of the supernatural is the first postulate of higher 
criticism. " Kuenen claimed, "We have nothing 
to do with inspiration." What Knobel and Nol- 
deke say of Isaiah's prediction of Israel's deliver- 
ance from captivity contains the critical reason for 
re-dating the prophetical writings and claiming 
for them another authorship. "A prophecy," they 
assert, "in which Cyrus is called by his name is not 
naturally the work of Isaiah who could not know 
in advance either the exile of the people to Babylon 
or the deliverance from that exile by Cyrus." 

Thus the supernatural inspiration by which the 
prophets foretold far distant future events is ar- 
bitrarily set aside as a peculiarity of the Bible, and 
their foresight becomes simply the knowledge of 
contemporary events. Dr. Driver holds that "no 



48 Must the Bible Go 

intelligible purpose would be subserved by Isaiah's 
announcing to the generation of Hezekiah an oc- 
currence lying nearly 200 years in the future and 
having no bearing on contemporary interests." 
Here we have a bald assumption (it is nothing 
more) that the prophet always speaks with refer- 
ence to contemporary interests and that prophecies 
concerning future events would have been unin- 
telligible to his contemporaries. Not much in 
advance of this assumption is Prof. George Adam 
Smith's idea of inspiration: "Isaiah prophesied 
and predicted all he did from loyalty to two simple 
truths, which he tells us he received from God 
Himself ; that sin must be punished and that the 
people of God must be saved. This simple faith, 
acting along with a wonderful knowledge of 
human affairs, constituted inspiration for Isaiah." 
That is to say, Isaiah was inspired in no other 
sense than Shakespeare or any other genius was 
inspired. Contrast with this the apostle's defini- 
tion of inspiration and see how much respect these 
critics have for New Testament authority. 
"Knowing this first that no prophecy of the Scrip- 
ture is of any private interpretation (Greek — 
Comes to be of the prophet's own motion or inven- 



Must the Bible Go 49 

Hon ) . For the prophecy came not in old time ( Gr . 
at any time) by the will of man" — by his "faith, 
knowledge of human nature and ceaseless vigil- 
ance of affairs" according to Prof. Smith — "but 
holy men of God spake as they were moved (Gr. 
borne along) by the Holy Ghost." (2 Pet. 1 120- 
21.) Here is a Power out of and above them- 
selves that seizes them and carries them along in 
the stream of its will. Thus prophecy is not the 
product of their own thought and knowledge, but 
a direct revelation to their minds. Indeed, they 
did not always understand the meaning of their 
own predictions, but "searched what or what man- 
ner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them 
did signify, when it testified beforehand, etc." 
( 1 Peter 1 : 1 1 . ) The same apostle declares "unto 
whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves" 
— as Driver contends, having to do with contem- 
porary interests — "but unto us they did minister 
the things" of their prophecies, that is, not unto 
themselves or contemporaries but unto future gen- 
erations did their prophecies pertain. 

How superior to the view of Smith and Driver 
is that of Professor Orr, who says: 



50 Must the 'Bible Go 

"The genuine prophet is conscious of being laid 
hold of by the Spirit of God as other men are not ; 
of receiving a message from Jehovah which he 
knows is not the product of his own thoughts, but 
recognizes as God's word coming to him, which is 
imparted to him with perfect clearness and over- 
powering certainty ; and which brings with it the 
call and constraint to deliver it to those for whom 
it is meant/' — The Problem of the Old Testa- 
ment. 

Now all these critical contentions regarding 
Divine inspiration and revelation are identical 
with the denials of Thomas Paine whose argu- 
ments are the stock in trade of certain profes- 
sors and writers occupying positions of honor 
and influence in the church. And the portentous 
feature of the present situation is not that pro- 
nounced enemies of a supernatural revelation like 
Paine and the whole school of German and Eng- 
lish rationalism hold and teach such views, but 
that theological seminaries and editorial sanctums 
of evangelical churches are hotbeds for the propa- 
gation of theories sprung from the soil of rank un- 
belief. The anomaly is that of professed believers 
in the inspired, authoritative character of the 
Scriptures adopting and teaching theories which 



Must the Bible Go 51 

destroy that character and wreck the faith of 
churches, whose activities are reduced to the plane 
of pure naturalism. 

That this is no random assertion may be seen 
from the tendency to reduce the miracles of the 
New Testament to mere natural phenomena or to 
attribute them to the disposition to magnify the 
marvelous — in other words, to deny the integrity 
of the record and say the thing never happened. 
For want of space I must confine myself to a single 
quotation from the Graded Series of Sunday 
School Lessons issued by Charles Scribner's Sons, 
and said to "embody the results of the latest 
scholarship." 

"It is easy to see," runs this "latest scholar- 
ship," "that the age that produced the Gospels 
would not be anxious for scientific accounts of the 
deeds of Jesus, but that it would expect of Him 
exactly the acts that are attributed to Him. It is 
possible, therefore, that some events, like the 
restoration of the Centurion's servant, were simple 
coincidences ; that others, like the apparent walk- 
ing of Jesus on the water, were natural deeds 



52 Must the Bible Go 

which the darkness and confusion caused to be 
misunderstood; that others, like the turning of 
water into wine, were really parables that became 
in course of time changed into miracles. As nearly 
all the miracles not of healing had their prototypes 
in the Old Testament many of them at least were 
attributed to Jesus because men expected such 
deeds from their Messiah, and finally became con- 
vinced that he must have performed them." Of 
the same' tenor is the expression of doubt whether 
Jairus' daughter "was really dead, or only in a 
swoon, or state of coma." 

To borrow a phrase, "it is easy to see" what kind 
of Gospel we would have received had the scien- 
tific methods of the "latest scholarship" been em- 
ployed to produce it. Instead of the simple, faith- 
ful narratives that give us an account of a Divine 
Saviour, who made the living God real to the con- 
sciousness of men, we should have had a falsified 
history with no evidence that God had come down 
to men in the revelation of His power and grace. 

Dr. Forsyth writing on "The Preacher and His 
Charter," in his work Positive Preaching and the 
Modern Mind, says : "The Gospels are homiletical 



Must the Bible Go 53 

biography, not psychological ; they are compiled on 
evangelical rather than critical principles. The 
stories told are but a trifling selection, not chosen 
to cast light on the motives of a deep and complex 
character, but selected entirely from a single 
point of view — that of the crucified, risen, exalted 
preached Saviour." He quotes herewith Julicher 
as saying: "The first Church troubled about the 
real Jesus only in so far as suited the Jesus living 
for their faith. . . . Had Mark attempted or 
achieved such a model biography of Jesus as his- 
torical science demands, his work would have been 
useless for religion. ,, 

That the age which produced the Gospels was 
not anxious for scientific accounts was the surest 
safeguard from error, because it assured to us a 
record of events by unsophisticated eye witnesses 
who were honest enough to tell what they saw 
without attempting to explain it away. That such 
an age expected of Jesus exactly the deeds attrib- 
uted to Him, shows they had a truer notion of 
the Old Testament than the modern critics have. 
It was their proof of his Messianic claims — a 
proof that the critics would have utterly destroyed 



54 Must the Bible Go 

by their rationalizing methods, leaving the world 
in darkness and sin. 

There is no half-way house where the mind can 
rest in this conflict between the traditional and 
the higher critical view of the Bible. The New 
Testament must share the fate of the Old, and 
Christ goes down with the Prophets. If there is 
no supernatural inspiration in the Old Testament, 
there can be no authority in the New. They stand 
or fall together. And this is the only consistent, 
logical view to take. Certainly it is not so repre- 
hensible as the attitude of professed faith in the 
divine inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, 
while the heart is with the critics who deny these 
things. To pretend to believe in the authority of 
Christ, while holding that the modern scholar is 
more competent than he to. decide who wrote the 
Scriptures is like the treachery of Joab who said to 
Amasa, "Art thou in health, my brother?" and 
then smote him with his sword in the fifth rib. 
How can they say, "Lord, to whom shall we go? 
thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe 
and are sure that thou art Christ the Son of the 
living God," and then declare he was mistaken 
when he taught there was a flood in the days of 



Must the Bible Go 55 

Noah and that the state of the world at his com- 
ing again would be as it was then? Dr. Mains 
quotes approvingly Dr. Driver's statement : "We 
are forced, consequently, to the conclusion that the 
flood as described by the biblical writers is unhis- 
torical." 

Thus these blind followers of the blind seek to 
enlighten the church without the Lamp of Life, for 
they have rejected His authority. To account for 
Christ's "false teachings ,, (?) by the theory that 
He and the Apostles "held the current Jewish no- 
tions respecting the Old Testament," contradicts 
the facts. He was in advance of His age and re- 
peatedly opposed these notions, boldly charging 
His contemporaries with ignorance of the Scrip- 
tures. "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures 
nor the power of God." His originality and inde- 
pendence of men prove the absurdity of this 
theory, and establish also the contemporary view 
of the Old Testament. The men of that age were 
far better judges of their sacred writings than 
these belated critics, who care no more for the 
integrity of the New Testament than they do for 
that of the Old. Dr. Howard Osgood well said : 

"If any one will collect all the myths said to be 



56 Must the Bible Go 

in the Old Testament, and compare what is said 
of these passages in the New Testament, he will 
soon find that to believe them myths he must make 
the whole New Testament a far worse myth, for 
it stamps these so-called myths as truth and builds 
its superstructure on them. If, as we are told, 
Christ and the New Testament did not know the 
truth as to facts in human history on earth, then 
they were still more ignorant of all things in the 
future, and no sane man would believe them. To 
this entire rejection of Christ as to His character 
and His teachings does the belief in myths in the 
Old Testament or in the New surely lead. ,, 

To which may be added the significant remark 
of Sir J. W. Dawson, in an able article on the 
Deluge: "Christianity founds itself, its founder 
himself being witness, on the early chapters of 
Genesis, as history and prophecy, and the treat- 
ment which these ancient and inspired records 
have met with in modern times at the hands of 
destructive criticism is doing its worst in aid of 
the anti-Christian tendencies of our times. ,, 

And nothing in the entire realm of thinking can 
equal the moral blindness, the ethical misconcep- 
tion and perversity of a profession of faith in the 



Must the Bible Go 57 

authoritative character of Christ and the New 
Testament while questioning their competency to 
speak the truth concerning the Old Testament. 
We endorse the characterization of Dr. Torrey 
who replied as follows to a personal question : 

"Brethren, I do not like to answer personal 
questions, but since this has been asked, let me say 
right here that I met Prof. George Adam Smith 
personally, and had a personal talk with him on 
this very question. Prof. Smith was in Northfield, 
and, by invitation, I met him at Mr. Moody's 
house. 

" Trof. Smith/ I said, 'you teach that the noth 
Psalm is not Messianic, and that it was not written 
by David ; that it refers to a brother of Jonathan 
Maccabeus, and is not by David at all, but by 
some unknown man of that period. If that be 
true, one of two things must also be true — it is 
certain, either that Jesus Christ knew it was not 
by David, and did not refer to Himself, in which 
case, in building an argument for His Divinity 
upon it, He deliberately pulled the wool over the 
eyes of those to whom He spoke, or else He did 
not know it, in which case He built an argument 
for His Divinity upon a mistake. In either case, 



58 Must the Bible Go 

what are you going to do with the Divinity of 
Christ ?' 

" 1 do not build my faith in His Divinity on the 
noth Psalm/ he replied. 

" 'Neither do 1/ I said, 'but, having found out 
that He is Divine, I must maintain that He knows 
what He is talking about when He built an argu- 
ment for His Divinity on this noth Psalm/ 

"Professor Smith undermined faith in the his- 
toricity of the story of Abraham and other Old 
Testament stories, and yet, gentlemen, he went 
into the pulpit on the Sunday morning before the 
conversation I referred to at Northfield Church, 
and preached on Gideon without breathing a sus- 
picion that it was not history. You, gentlemen, 
may call that 'Reverent Higher Criticism/ I call 
it dishonesty. I do not care whether it is George 
Adam Smith, or who it is — it is dishonesty/' 

Yet this is the man who is invited to lecture in 
denominational schools and whose books are cir- 
culated by the denominational publishing houses 
of this country! 

I will now state why a good man of ordinary in- 
telligence is competent to decide the main points 



Must the Bible Go 59 

at issue in this discussion and shall give some of 
the results already apparent of the work of higher 
critics. 



60 Must the Bible Go 



"Even Nature hides her treasures from the 
trifler." 

"We all know the sort of morbidly active- 
brained child who will pull a valuable watch to 
pieces, and then tell us with a smile that there was 
nothing in it but wheels and things. He has his 
counterpart in the foreign infidel type of scholar, 
who, albeit as ignorant of man and his needs as a 
monk, and as ignorant of God and His ways as a 
monkey,. sets himself with a light heart to tear 
the Bible to pieces. If the Bible must be given up, 
it is a disaster unparalleled in the history of 
Christendom/' — Sir Robert Anderson. 

"The Bible, while it encourages all manner of 
investigation, insists upon a right method and 
spirit in the conduct of investigation. He who 
does not conduct his Bible study in such spirit, 
forfeits all blessing in that study, and, as has been 
intimated, may incur the judgment of God in the 
infliction of judicial blindness; and the ultimate 
effect of judicial blindness in the teacher is wide- 
spread disaster to those who follow his pernicious 
ways, as has been already seen in many cases in 
the Church of Christ."— Arthur T. Pierson, The 
Bible and Spiritual Criticism. 



CHAPTER IV 

REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 
TRUTH— SINCERITY 

A consideration of the qualifications needed for 
the quest of truth will deal a blow to the dog- 
matic claims of higher criticism and bring out the 
inadequacy of mere book learning to determine the 
main issues of this question. It is the boast of 
certain critics that their school of thought alone 
is competent to arrive at a rational solution of the 
Biblical problem. As an instance of this style of 
assertion, note the following statements of Prof. 
Shailer Mathews, taken from an article on Amer- 
ican Protestantism in the Constructive Quarterly. 
Having attributed the "gratifying progress" of 
the higher critical and evolutionary views to "the 
entrance into church life of young men and women 
who have been trained in the modern scientific 
point of view, and the historico-critical treatment 
of the Bible," he says: 

"True, the task of theological reconstruction is 
but begun. The majority of Protestants in Amer- 
ica are still Hebraic in their world-view and mon- 

61 



62 Must the Bible Go 

archists in their theology. The best theological 
schools are undoubtedly in advance of the large 
element of our church membership which is un- 
trained to think in other than inherited words and 
concepts. It will take at least another ten years 
to bring our business men to see that they know 
less about theology than do properly trained min- 
isters." 

It would not be difficult to show the error in 
these statements — their misconception of the 
teaching of Scripture, their false boast of the 
superiority of radical scholarship. The Hebraic 
viewpoint, not the Pharisaical perversion, but the 
outlook of prophets and apostles, will persist 
despite critical animadversion, and theological 
monarchism will continue to be the persuasion of 
all who pray "Thy Kingdom come," and "wait 
for His Son from Heaven." 

I call special attention to the last sentence, be- 
cause of its unfavorable comparison of "our busi- 
ness men," with "properly trained ministers." If 
those men were to study twenty years and be as 
poorly qualified to reason on this question as most 
of the modern critics, the church would be doubly 
afflicted. Some of them know more of real Biblical 



Must the Bible Go 63 

theology than half of their critics whose "scien- 
tific" training has unfitted them to deal sensibly 
with the word of God. 

This brings me to the point suggested by the 
topic now to be considered — indispensable ele- 
ments in the quest for truth. The quotation just 
given implies that technical learning is the one 
essential to a correct understanding of the Biblical 
problem. We do not doubt its importance and its 
place in this discussion ; but we insist that the pri- 
mary place belongs to elements without which 
such learning is worthless and worse than worth- 
less. For this, unbalanced by certain intellectual 
and moral qualities, may prove a snare to the in- 
vestigator, leading to misrepresentation of facts 
and false generalizations. 

The first of these requisites is sincerity. I do 
not shrink from this test for the conservative 
position. I believe in comparing views that error 
may be detected and truth established. But I 
think there is reason to doubt the sincerity of the 
principal exponents of higher criticism. Exam- 
ples are not wanting of aversion to an examina- 
tion of conservative arguments, and, worse still, 
of refusing to modify views that are shown to be 



64 Must the Bible Go 

erroneous. Wilhelm Moller whose Historical and 
Critical Considerations against the Graf-Well- 
hausen Hypothesis have been translated and pub- 
lished in English under the title "Are the Critics 
Right?" says that at one time he was "immovably 
convinced of the irrefutable correctness of that 
hypothesis so long as he allowed it alone to have 
an effect upon him," and "that little encourage- 
ment is given to students of the Old Testament 
even to take in their hand for once a book of a dif- 
ferent school. I myself," he goes on, "have been in 
several cases advised against it by professors. 
Now it cannot for a moment be doubted that it is 
utterly unscientific to seek to know one's opponent 
from polemical writings only." 

His deliverance from the Graf-Wellhausen 
snare is told as follows : "But after my attention 
was once directed to its weaknesses (first by 
Kohler in Erlangen) after I had studied with 
some thoroughness the scientific literature on the 
other side, this hypothesis seemed to me more and 
more monstrous. By discussions on the subject 
in the Theological Societies at Erlangen and 
Halle, in the Tholuck Institute at Halle, and in 
the Theological Seminary at Wittenberg, as well 



Must the Bible Go 65 

as by frequent conversations with friends and ac- 
quaintances, my own view was confirmed and 
elucidated, so that I hope that the change which 
took place in my case may and will be effected 
in others also." 

The result of Mr. Moller's studies has been the 
production of a work ("Are the Critics Right?") 
which utterly refutes the hypothesis he once thor- 
oughly believed. 

This able scholar closes his work with the fol- 
lowing conclusions against the higher critical 
mode of treating the philosophy of religion : 

"i. It is in opposition to the Old Testament, 
which everywhere proclaims a Divine revelation. 
It is thoroughly unhistorical, in so far as it uses 
the sources otherwise than they admit of, and yet 
turns them to advantage so far as they agree 
with it. 

"2. It is at present carried out quite inconsist- 
ently in the Old Testament; for the different re- 
ligious conceptions of the particular laws, even 
according to criticism, correspond in their origin 
not to the spirit of the people, but always to the 
ideal of the individuals only. The people as a 
whole are still almost as immature as before. 



66 Must the Bible Go 

"3. It must, to be consistent, seek to under- 
stand the revelation in Christ as a natural develop- 
ment also. 

"4. It must regard a perfecting of religious 
ideas beyond Christ as not only possible, but 
necessary. 

"Moreover, it is not the case, even according to 
the Biblical view, that the complete revelation was 
made at the beginning. It is, rather, prepared 
for by the early revelation and by the leading of 
the patriarchs. Notwithstanding the revelation, 
a progress in revelation takes place within the Old 
Testament (see especially the ethical deepening 
through the prophets and their Messianic pro- 
phecies). Finally, the New Testament is self-evi- 
dently a vast advance upon the Old. 

"But if we believe that the essential elements of 
the Old Testament revelation were actually in 
existence at the time of Moses, we see above all in 
the further course of Israelitish history a develop- 
ment in understanding of the revelation and in 
agreement with it." 

More recently he has published a book with the 
German title Wider den Bann der Quellenscheid- 
ung. Anleitung zu einer neuen Erfassung des 



Must the Bible Go 67 

Pentateuch — Problems. Of its "most excellent 
discussion of the use of doublets as a means of es- 
tablishing the documentary theory/' Mr. Wiener 
remarks : "What an admirable thing it would be 
if anybody could induce some of our poor higher 
critical theorists really to master and grapple with 
this part of M oiler's work!" 

Now this case of Moller's is adduced to show 
the insincerity of critics whose obsession with 
their preconceived theory and the arguments by 
which they deem it established makes them indis- 
posed to consider opposing arguments and incap- 
able of arriving at sound conclusions. What con- 
fidence can be placed in the intellectual and moral 
leadership of men who advise against taking in 
hand a book of a different school? 

Moreover, as Mr. Wiener, already referred to, 
one of the ablest scholars that ever appeared in 
defence of the conservative position, has proved 
to the hilt, such men have evinced a disregard for 
the elementary principles of fair dealing with the 
public, misrepresenting facts and persisting in the 
publication of views that have been shown to be 
untenable, thus deceiving the public by concealing 
the strength of the conservative position and the 



68 Must the Bible Go 

weakness of their own. A striking instance of 
this indifference to the moral requirements of 
critical investigations is made known in a cor- 
respondence between Mr. Wiener and Drs. Driver 
and Briggs, editors of the International Critical 
Commentary. This correspondence, relating to 
Dr. Skinner's Commentary on Genesis, and origi- 
nally published in the Bibliotheca Sacra Quarterly, 
may now be seen in Mr. Wiener's latest book — 
Pentateuchal Studies, published by the Bibliotheca 
Sacra Co., Oberlin, Ohio. Mr. Wiener lays stress 
on the following points : " ( i ) For a century and a 
half the critics followed Astruc's clue practically 
without textual investigation; (2) When recent 
textual researches had rendered their position in- 
secure, Dr. Skinner deliberately misrepresented 
the facts in an attempt to bolster up the documen- 
tary theory; (3) When the attention of the gen- 
eral editors was drawn to this, they took no steps 
to undeceive the public, which had been deceived 
under the cover and sanction of their names, and 
put forward the contentions contained in the joint 
letters/' In a subsequent correspondence with 
Dr. Gordon of the Presbyterian College, Mon- 
treal, who undertook to defend Dr. Skinner, Mr. 



Must the Bible Go 69 

Wiener justifies his course in the following indict- 
ment against the Wellhausen critics : 

"I find that the Wellhausen theories are sup- 
ported by a large number of professors in various 
parts of the world, who have enormous power 
by virtue of their positions, the numbers of their 
supporters and the extent to which they and their 
supporters control the general and technical press. 
The power is used with the utmost unscrupulous- 
ness to prevent any opponent of theirs from get- 
ting a fair hearing and to induce their pupils and 
the general public to believe that their theories are 
unchallengeably true. There are many ways of 
being dishonest and as a general rule the Wellhau- 
sen critics use more caution than Dr. Skinner has 
done ; but with a few striking exceptions they fall 
as far short of the standards of conduct observed 
by honorable laymen as does Dr. Skinner himself. 
As a result, I have been driven to adopt the course 
that I have followed in this instance to expose the 
methods by which the Wellhausen theory is main- 
tained. If Dr. Gordon or any other critic finds 
this plain statement of fact unpalatable, the rem- 
edy for this state of affairs lies in his own hands. 
Let him take the works of the conservative writers 



70 Must the Bible Go 

and tackle them honestly, grappling with each 
point in turn, refuting it or admitting its validity 
publicly. Then and only then will he have the 
right to pronounce our opinion as to who is or is 
not 'simple, sincere and absolutely candid/ " 

That these are not random statements may be 
seen from an incident told by Eduard Hertlein in 
an essay on "Liberal Theology and Science" pub- 
lished in Die Tat as a sort of counter-reply to 
Julicher's polemical essay on "The Placing of a 
Prussian Theological Seminary Under Guardian- 
ship." He exposes the falsity of the theory that 
liberalism stands for freedom of research and fair 
play. He says : 

"Some years ago I wrote an article on the 12th 
chapter of Revelation. In it I showed that it was 
not at all necessary to see in this fragment a 
heathen myth; rather that one was only on the 
right track when one regarded it as an allegorical 
report concerning a persecution of the Christians. 
. . . From this point of view the theory that 
this old Christian document, glorifying a super- 
natural and not merely human Christ, was excep- 
tional among contemporary documents, threat- 
ened to fall away. I placed my MSS. at the dis- 



Must the Bible Go 71 

posal of one after another of the theological re- 
views which are generally supposed to serve the 
'free' theology. Among the reasons for refusing 
to publish it, perhaps the most interesting was that 
the publishers did not wish to lose subscribers. It 
was probably also the most honest. But the others 
also gave me clearly to understand how difficult 
it is to publish anything in a scientific organ of the 
'free' theology which goes against the current of 
the ordinary highly questionable (critical) 
methods." 



72 Must the Bible Go 



"In his History of the Criminal Law, Sir James 
Fitz james Stephens places on record the matured 
judgment of the Judicial Bench that no kind of 
evidence needs more the test of cross-examination 
than that of experts. In no other sphere save that 
of religious controversy would sensible people ac- 
cept the dicta of experts until they had been thus 
tested; and yet the history of the higher 
criticismumovement gives abundant proof that no 
class of experts is more untrustworthy than the 
critic." — Sir Robert Anderson, The Bible and 
Modern Criticism. 

"At the bar we sometimes find a man's logic 
swamped by his learning; and so it is in theology. ,, 
— Lord Hatherly (Lord Chancellor of England) 
in a letter to the Bishop of Durham. 

"How can any man who cannot distinguish be- 
tween a stone and a house, because he has first 
fuddled himself by calling both 'sanctuaries/ 
claim to speak with authority on complicated 
questions of historical development, or pretend to 
possess any insight into the meaning and work- 
ing of institutions ?" — Wiener, The Origin of the 
Pentateuch, 



CHAPTER V 

REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 

TRUTH, CONTINUED— OBJECTIVISM 

AND GENERAL CULTURE 

I mentioned Sincerity as the first requisite to 
the attainment of truth. No man can be trusted 
in a quest of this kind, unless his desire for truth 
be the controlling motive of the quest. If this de- 
sire be colored by the personal element of devotion 
to one's theory, by the disposition to make that 
theory itself the criterion of truth and personal 
satisfaction the end of its establishment, the mind 
will become opaque to the light. There will be no 
light to give out, for none can be received. Sin- 
cerity alone will furnish a transparent medium for 
the light of truth. This cannot exist where mixed 
motives prevail. The instances cited were intend- 
ed to prove this. We cannot characterize as sin- 
cere a man who contends for a theory against 
facts; who clings to preconceived notions in the 
face of proof presented by his opponents and even 
refuses to consider such proof. 

73 



74 Must the Bible Go 

Cognate with this quality of sincerity is what I 
may call, for want of a better phrase, the objective 
disposition — the disposition to objectify the con- 
sciousness and consider the case from the view- 
point of the time, place and person whose history 
is in discussion. To present themes of the past, 
one must project himself among the people and 
scenes of the past. The realist is the true artist. 
"Paint ;me as I am, warts and all!" said Cromwell 
to the painter before whom he sat for a picture. 
An artist who designed to paint a Dutchman 
would not use an American for his model. Dur- 
ing his student days the writer would occasionally 
visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New 
York City. He recalls how amused he was at the 
anachronism of a painting of the Crucifixion. The 
artist was evidently a Dutchman, for his figures 
were Dutch; there was not a Jewish or Roman 
physiognomy on the canvas. There stood near 
the cross a typical Dutchman with medieval sword 
hanging by his side. The whole scene was sub- 
jective, and betrayed the artist's inability to ob- 
jectify the scene and paint a real Jewish-Roman 
picture. 



Must the Bible Go 75 

Not unlike this is the subjectivity of German 
and English rationalists who conceiving a theory 
of development for the history of Israel ignore 
Hebrew idioms and make the ancient Israelite 
talk and act like a modern Teuton. These men do 
not go to the Bible for a hypothesis ; they take one 
to the Bible which is then expected to conform to 
it. One does not need to be a scholar, to see the 
absurdity of this. The subjective reasoning of 
the critics has nothing in common with the object- 
ive facts of Scripture, which have again and again 
proved to be the facts of archaeology. This 
reasoning, however dignified by a show of learn- 
ing, is no better than that of the colored preacher 
who had evolved a critical theory of his own con- 
cerning the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israel- 
ites. He said the Red Sea had frozen over, and 
the Israelites crossed easily, but the Egyptians 
assaying to do so with their heavy chariots, broke 
through the ice and were drowned. One of his 
hearers objected that geography showed this took 
place in the tropics, and how could ice form in the 
tropics? The old darky was ready w r ith his sub- 
jectivism. "Pse glad you axed dat question, caze 
it gibs me a chance to explain. You see dat war a 



76 Must the Bible Go 

great while ago before dey had any geog'aphy, 
and before dare war any tropics." 

So, as already stated, the critics originally de- 
clared the Pentateuch could not have been written 
by Moses, because that was a great while ago, 
before they had any writing and before there was 
any code of law; and they were no more correct 
than the colored preacher. 

We may well adopt the language of the learned 
Jewish scholar of London, before mentioned, re- 
specting a critical position he had demolished: 
"We can only express the hope that a time may 
come when some sympathy with the Hebrew 
genius and its methods of expression may be 
deemed an indispensable precondition of the 
task of producing a commentary on a Hebrew 
book." And Prof. Sayce strikingly remarks: 
"A document written in accordance with the 
critical requirements of a German professor can 
never have come to us from the ancient East." 

The fatal objection to higher criticism is that it 
will not allow the Scriptures to speak for them- 
selves. These are treated, to quote Prof. Orr, "like 
criminal suspects, whose every word is to be 
doubted unless hostile cross-examination fails to 



Must the Bible Go 77 

shake it or independent confirmation of it can be 
produced. Like other witnesses the Bible writers 
are entitled to be heard with prima facia presump- 
tion of their honesty." No better answer to this 
subjective treatment of the Scriptures has been 
made than Prof. James Robertson's statement 
concerning the methods generally employed by 
those who advocate a very late date of large parts 
of the Pentateuch. These methods, he says, "are 
open to the objections, that they underrate the 
literary attainments and religious standing of 
earlier times, or undervalue the insight and guid- 
ance possessed by the sacred writers, or even do 
violence to the documents, by attributing to the 
authors a mode of writing history which seems 
artificial, and inconsistent with the manifest hon- 
esty and simplicity of purpose which they dis- 
play." (The Old Testament and Its Contents.) 
What Lessing says of the New Testament 
will apply with equal force to the Old Testa- 
ment: "If now Livy and Dionysius and Poly- 
bius and Tacitus are treated so frankly and 
nobly that we do not put them to the rack for 
every syllable, why not also Matthew and Mark 
and Luke and John." The "why not" is too much 



78 Must the Bible Go 

for the higher critics. Their ingenuity is a source 
of amusement rather than instruction to sensible 
people. When Wilfred Ward showed Huxley 
several different accounts of the Metaphysical 
Society and its doings, and pointed out a number 
of discrepancies between the accounts, the latter 
said, "Don't find any more or the German critics 
will prove that the Society never existed. ,, There 
is scarcely a notable piece of writing in existence 
which could not by the method of higher criticism 
be resolved into divers independent fragments. It 
has been tried on an ode of Burns. He wrote the 
ode in April, 1786, and the incidents are known; 
but the application of certain canons of criticism 
disprove the facts and demand three men to do 
the work. 

(Cited by Dr. Herbert W. Magoun in an able 
article — A Layman's View of the Critical History 
— in Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1913. Refer- 
ence is also made to the manner in which a bril- 
liant author touches "at every turn the weak spots 
of Homeric criticism." "By applying the methods 
of Robert, Bethe, Leaf, and Murray to poetry he 
has written himself, he shows that it is the work 
of many men in many ages.") 



Must the Bible Go 79 

Prof. Mead, of Hartford, to expose the absurd- 
ity of subjective criticism, proved that the Epistle 
to the Romans consisted of several independent 
documents. The critics have carried the method 
so far that single sentences are cut to pieces and 
the fragments assigned to different authors. No 
man with ordinary good sense believes that this is 
anything but pure imagination. 

The remark of Matthew Arnold is an apt de- 
scription of the unreliability of such misnamed 
scholarship : "After all," he says, "shut a number 
of men up to make study and learning the business 
of their lives, and how many of them for want of 
some discipline or other, seem to lose all balance 
of judgment, all common sense." 

Diversities of style and seeming contradictions 
are a large part of the stock in trade handled by 
the critics. Yet Dr. Heinrici, quoted by Professor 
Green, calls attention to Scherer's ingenious 
analysis of the Prologue of Faust in his Goethe 
Studies, as an instance of how precarious is the 
subjective method of determining the question of 
the authorship of a composition. Scherer pro- 
posed to explain the diversities of style and inner 
contradictions from "differences in the time of 



80 Must the Bible Go 

composition and subsequent combination. And 
now the oldest manuscript of Faust has been pub- 
lished by Erich Schmidt, which proves that it was 
the 'young Goethe' who wrote the prologue at 
one effort essentially as it now stands. It is the 
same 'young Goethe' who speaks both in the fer- 
ment of youth and in a disillusioned old age." 

Would the critics fare any better than Scherer 
did with his analysis of Goethe's Prologue, if the 
original manuscripts of these writings should 
turn up ? As it is, the reason of the case is against 
them. The following additional examples are in 
point : 

"No critic who might be given a complete set of 
the works of James Russell Lowell, all unknown 
to him, could consistently declare the Bigelow 
Papers and The Vision of Sir Launfal were writ- 
ten by the same man. But we know they were. 
Or if we took a historic drama of Shakespeare, 
where we know Beaumont entered into composite 
authorship with the great dramatist, what critic 
would confidently attempt the task of declaring 
the separate writings of each? Mr. Gladstone's 
literary style at eighty was quite different from 
that which marked his writings at thirty. Criti- 



Must the Bible Go 81 

cism would hesitate that, according to its prin- 
ciples, one man had written both products from 
his pen." — Dr. Howard Agnew Johnston, Bible 
Criticism and the Average Man. 

"Let the Indian Penal Code which was drafted 
by Macaulay be contrasted with the speeches and 
ballads of the same writer and similar divergen- 
cies of vocabulary and rhythm will at once be- 
come apparent. If it be urged that Macaulay 
came after a period of long literary development, 
I answer (i) that it is impossible to lay down 
narrow rules which no genius can transcend, and 
(2) that no man, however gifted, could have writ- 
ten "dooms" and speeches in the same vocabulary 
and rhythm and made a success of both. A man 
of genius who found himself confronted with such 
very different tasks could not avoid creating the 
means of executing them. In a word, I conceive 
that in each case the style was merely a tool 
forged by Moses for the accomplishment of his 
purpose." — Wiener, The Origin of the Penta- 
teuch. 

Another requisite to the attainment of truth, 
especially in a matter of this kind, is General Cul- 
ture. I may illustrate by an incident I once read 



82 Must the Bible Go 

about. A French farmer was standing in an art 
gallery before a painting of a bridleless horse that 
was foaming at the mouth. The artist whose 
painting it was being near and observing the 
farmer laugh, came up and asked him what he was 
laughing at. He replied, "At the fool who made 
that picture." "Why," exclaimed the artist, "it 
is the greatest success of the season ; everybody is 
talking about it." The farmer simply said, "Any 
fool ought to know that a horse does not foam at 
the mouth unless he has a bit in it." It is said the 
artist immediately had the picture taken down. 

That painter, like the higher critic, had a great 
deal of technical knowledge and could paint, which 
the farmer could not do, but the latter had a kind 
of knowledge which the artist needed to avoid 
making "a fool of himself" when he set about 
painting a horse. He pursued the subjective 
method of the critics — conceiving nothing to be 
something and then publishing it as a fact. The 
statement of Prof. Willis J. Beecher will sufficient- 
ly emphasize the importance of this qualification 
for Bible study and criticism : 

"It would be difficult to imagine anything more 
mischievous than this notion that experts in 



Must the Bible Go 83 

scholarship are the only persons qualified to pass 
on biblical problems. Into these problems enter 
questions that depend on one's knowledge of 
Hebrew or Syriac, or of Oriental antiquities ; but 
into them also enter even more importantly ques- 
tions of ordinary living, questions of sentiment, 
all sorts of questions of human experience. A 
learned man who lacks religious sympathy, and 
lacks shrewdness and experiences in human living 
is less well equipped for Bible study than the un- 
learned person who has these qualifications." 

The Saturday Evening Post relates an incident 
concerning Senator William P. Frye, of Maine, 
and Agassiz the scientist, which shows the irre- 
sistible force of fact when weighed against theory. 
On one occasion the Senator, after returning from 
his summer outing to the Penobscot woods of 
Maine, met the celebrated naturalist to whom he 
described his experience. "Among the triumphs," 
he said, "was the capture of a speckled trout that 
weighed fully eight pounds." Dr. Agassiz smiled 
and said: "Reserve that for the credulous and con- 
vivial circles of the rod and reel celebrants, but 
spare the feelings of a sober scientist/' 



84 Must the Bible Go 

"This is not a campaign whopper I'm telling; I 
weighed that trout carefully, and it was an eight 
pounder/' 

"My dear Mr. Frye," remonstrated Agassiz, 
"permit me to inform you that sahalinus fonti- 
nalis never attains that extraordinary weight. 
The creature you caught could not have been a 
speckled trout. All the authorities on ichthyology 
would disprove your claim." 

"All that I can say to that," replied Senator 
Frye, "is that there are, then, bigger fish in Maine 
than are dreamed of in your noble science." As 
they parted, the Senator added : "If you will estab- 
lish a summer school somewhere under the 
shadows of Mount Katahdin, I'll wager that it 
will not be long before you will have occasion to 
alter your text-books." 

The next season found the Maine statesman at 
his usual avocation in the Maine woods. One day 
he caught a speckled trout that weighed nine 
pounds. He packed it in ice and sent it to his 
friend Agassiz. A few days later he went to the 
station where he received his mail and telegrams. 
One of the latter was a message from the great 



Must the Bible Go 85 

scientist, which read: "The science of a lifetime 
kicked to death by a fact. Agassiz." 
The application to the critics is evident. 



86 Must the Bible Go 



'The procedure of the critics in treating the 
sources so arbitrarily, and at the same time want- 
ing to draw a faithful historical picture, is a con- 
tradictio in adjecto and forfeits a priori every pre- 
tence to credibility." — Moller, Are the Critics 
Right? p. 146. 

"The ark sometimes fell into the hands of the 
Philistines, but the Philistines could not do any- 
thing with the ark of God. It was of no use to 
them. Sooner or later they must hand it back to 
Israel. The interpretation of Scripture will re- 
ceive no benefit or light worth speaking of, but 
from the Church of Jesus Christ herself. . . . 
The real light on the Scripture can only proceed 
from those who, by the selfsame Holy Ghost 
which breathed the Scriptures, have been taught 
to believe the things that are contained in the 
Scriptures/' — Adolph Saphir, The Divine Unity 
of Scripture. 

"It is ignorance of Christ which turns the 
Scriptures into a dark, inexplicable riddle. ,, — 
Birks's Modern Rationalism, 



CHAPTER VI 
REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 
TRUTH (CONTINUED)— HIGHER CRITI- 
CISM EXPOSED IN THE LIGHT OF 
COMMON SENSE 

From what has already been advanced, it is 
evident that higher critics are not as competent to 
deal with this question as men whose judgment is 
balanced by qualities lacking in the former. If 
there were nothing but plain common sense to 
guide deliberation, it would be sufficient to con- 
demn the absurd and wicked assumptions of 
higher criticism and utterly to wipe out its con- 
clusions. Of this quality in relation to the subject 
I wish now to speak. 

First, then, in opposition to the spirit and rea- 
soning of higher criticism, common sense dictates 
that the Bible should have a square deal — that it 
should be allowed to speak for itself. The critics 
as a class are too busy trying to establish a con- 
jectural hypothesis to think with candor upon the 
words of Scripture. "The entrance of Thy words 

87 



88 Must the Bible Go 

giveth light." But light is for the eye, whose 
power of vision depends on freedom from the 
morbific influence of prepossession. The first con- 
dition of moral perception is a mind divested of 
prejudice, openness to light. To such a mind the 
Scriptures will demonstrate their harmony and 
truthfulness. The experience of Dr. Howard 
Kelly of Johns Hopkins University, is a striking 
illustration of the fact stated. This eminent physi- 
cian and scientist writes : "I have within the last 
twenty years of my life come out of uncertainty 
and doubt into faith which is an absolute dominat- 
ing conviction of the truth and about which I 
have not the shadow of doubt." Once profoundly 
disturbed about the traditional faith and flounder- 
ing in the bog of higher criticism, he got out by 
this means: "One day it occurred to me to see 
what the Book had to say for itself/' The result 
was, he firmly believed the Bible to be the inspired 
word of God, and that Jesus Christ is the Divine 
Saviour of the world. How reasonable the 
method, how simple the process of reaching cer- 
tainty concerning the Scriptures, and how glo- 
rious the personal consequence ! 



Must the Bible Go 89 

Allied with this thought is the proposition that 
common sense affirms it is unfair to treat the 
Bible, as in no sense different from other litera- 
ture. The Bible claims to be the product not of 
human sagacity and foresight, but of Divine in- 
spiration, and to be, therefore, a supernatural 
revelation which was miraculously attested. As 
such it is entitled to a chance to vindicate itself 
not only by such principles of ratiocination as ap- 
ply to it in common with other literature, but also 
by those peculiar marks and accompaniments 
which pertain alone to a Divine revelation. 

Hence to bring to the study of the Scriptures 
the settled notion that "there is no true prophecy/' 
and "no true miracle," is to prejudge the case and 
rule oneself out of court as incompetent to proceed 
with the work of investigation. This is exactly 
what the originators of higher criticism have 
done, and if professed evangelicals who have 
joined this school still assert allegiance to a Divine 
revelation, they do so inconsistently with the fun- 
damental arguments of the school; they do, in 
fact, cast away the substance of inspiration and 
substitute the kernel of rationalistic criticism, re- 
taining only the shell of orthodoxy. 



90 Must the Bible Go 

Two things are observable of these followers of 
Wellhausen & Co. — they ignore not merely the 
governing purpose of the sacred writer, but the 
promised agency of the Divine Spirit in the pro- 
duction of his work, and they take no account of 
the spiritual character of the Scriptures. They 
treat the Scriptures as uninspired, in the peculiar 
sense asserted therein, and as secular — in a word, 
as distinctly human writings with all the limita- 
tions of such writings and none of the safeguards 
assured by divine agency. The New as well as 
the Old Testament suffers by this emasculation. 
The apostles are turned against Christ, and Christ 
Himself is robbed of authority. It means nothing 
that Christ declared His apostles should be guided 
into all truth by the Holy Spirit, if their writings 
contradict His teachings or are not in the highest 
sense authoritative. Nothing? It wipes out the 
idea of inspiration and leaves us without a revela- 
tion. 

The low, secular notion concerning the Scrip- 
tures, conceived by the critics, is a flagrant cause 
of false reasoning and renders impossible a cor- 
rect understanding of these writings. We meet 
this wrong conception and erroneous reasoning at 



Must the Bible Go 91 

every turn. Two examples will sufficiently em- 
phasize one of the serious deficiencies of higher 
criticism. Reference has been made to the inter- 
changeable use of certain names. By this it is not 
implied that such a use of names was arbitrary. 
Higher critics make the mention of such names 
the basis of their documentary theory, but com- 
mon sense finds in the spiritual character of the 
Scriptures a convincing reason why the same 
writer should employ different terms and phrases 
in his treatment of a subject. The names which 
designate the Divine Being — Elohim (God) and 
Jehovah (Lord) — are in point. The former is 
His creative name, the name which describes His 
original relation to the work of creation while 
the latter sets forth His personal unfolding to 
that work, His covenant, redemptive character. 
Hence, the inspired author of Genesis would use 
Elohim only in the first chapter, but would need, 
in subsequent chapters, another designation also, 
because he was to bring out additional aspects of 
the Divine character. 

The other example, to be adduced as evincing 
the want of discernment on the part of these 
critics, is the account of certain features of the 



92 Must the Bible Go 

Tabernacle. Wellhausen, notwithstanding ex- 
press statements in Maccabees that the golden 
altar and golden table were both carried away 
by Antiochus Epiphanes and renewed at the feast 
of dedication, questions the existence of an altar 
of incense, even in the second temple, the chief 
ground of his denial being the fact that in 
Exodus the command for the making of the 
altar of r incense does not appear where we 
might expect it, in chapters 25-29, but at the 
commencement of chapter 30. The explana- 
tion for this order is Divine and cannot be seen 
by those who find only a human development 
with no typical or prophetic outlook in the Leviti- 
cal Economy. The altar of incense represented 
the priestly ministration of worship which could 
take place only after the events symbolized by the 
other parts of the tabernacle; hence this altar 
could be made only after the other pieces of fur- 
niture. The entire tabernacle teaches the Divine 
process of man's recovery from sin to God, 
through incarnation and atonement, the Lord 
God coming out of His holy place (where the Ark 
of the Covenant with its mediating mercy seat 
lay hid) through the outer sanctuary (where the 



Must the Bible Go 93 

golden candlestick and table of shewbread stood 
for the "Light of the World" and the "Bread of 
Life," the essential nature of the incarnate God) 
to the meeting place between the sinner and God, 
at the brazen altar (typifying the Cross) where 
the sin-bearer dies and the ground of reconcilia- 
tion is effected. On this ground the high priest 
(who typifies Jesus Christ) can institute worship 
in His church (altar of incense) and shed light by 
His Spirit (candlestick) and become food (shew- 
bread) to believers. Christ could not enter upon 
His priestly ministry till He had made an atone- 
ment for sin, but as He had no sin to be washed 
away Himself, the laver of regeneration does not 
appear in the order of the typical system till after 
the altar of incense. So believers are reconciled 
at the cross before they can truly worship ; but as 
they have sin to be cleansed away as well as sins 
to be forgiven, they must be regenerated as well 
as reconciled; hence the placing of the laver for 
the priesthood of believers after the high priest 
has made atonement and passed within the vail to 
appear in the presence of God for us. 

Sir Robert Anderson has truly said: "Not a 
single student of prophecy can be found in the 



94 Must the Bible Go 

ranks of the critics; not a single individual who 
understands the Pentateuch as 'the word of the 
beginning of Christ/ In other words, the critics 
know nothing of typology of Scripture. And 
therefore they are ignorant of the language in 
which Christian doctrine is taught in the New 
Testament. " 

All this glorious, symbolical teaching is nothing 
to them ; and theological professors and Christian 
ministers who adopt their premises and promul- 
gate their conclusions stultify their profession 
and betray the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. Their 
protestations of loyalty to the truth are vain. 
They must be judged by the logical and practical 
results of their alliance with the deniers of the 
faith. Dr. Clarke, whose lectures on the Use of 
the Scriptures might more appropriately be de- 
scribed as the abuse of the Scriptures, is a con- 
spicuous example of men who sit in the chairs of 
Christian institutions and play into the hands of 
outspoken enemies of a Divine Revelation. In 
this book Dr. Clarke asserts, "We have no histor- 
ical narrative of the beginning of sin, and theology 
receives from the Scriptures no record of that be- 
ginning/' and goes on to reject the entire sacri- 



Must the Bible Go 95 

ficial system of the Old Testament as having no 
relevancy to New Testament teaching and no 
bearing on Christian theology. 

Even He who "spake as never man spake" is 
not spared from this wholesale repudiation of 
Scripture narratives. The position is taken that 
Christ taught ignorantly concerning His literal, 
personal return to the earth ; that His "foresight" 
was "limited," and that "the advent hope ex- 
pressed in genuine words of Jesus" has "no place 
at all in the gift and revelation of Christ, and 
therefore our principle requires us to drop it and 
all that belongs to it out of our Christian theolo- 
gy." This is the sum of his reasoning: "Visible 
advent, simultaneous resurrection, assemblage of 
all men for judgment, millennial reign of Christ 
on earth, — all is Jewish survival, historically dis- 
credited by the work of Christ Himself ; it is a re- 
mainder from pre-Christian life and hope, demon- 
strated to be non-Christian by the different course 
of Christian history; wherefore it forms no part 
of Christian theology." 

Thus this man, miscalled Christian teacher, 
takes his place with "the scoffers in the last days, 
saying, where is the promise of His coming, for 



96 Must the Bible Go 

since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as 
they were from the beginning of the creation." 
Dr. Clarke changes the apostle's phraseology a 
bit, but his denial is identical with that of infidel 
scoffers ; the promise of Christ's coming has been 
discredited by the course of history ! But the last 
word of history has not been written yet, and Dr. 
Clarke and his kind will one day realize the truth 
of the solemn declaration: "Heaven and earth 
shall pass away, but my words shall not pass 
away." As an attempt to be irenical, to make the 
new theology popular, this book of Dr. Clarke's is 
of a piece with the worst anti-Christian writing of 
the times and forms a scandalous mess of assump- 
tion and superficial reasoning. Infinitely superior 
to this "darkening of counsel by words without 
knowledge" is the strong, common sense view of 
old Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. In his dis- 
course on the Freeness of the Gospel he says : 

"It is impossible to look into the Bible with the 
most ordinary attention without feeling that we 
have got into a moral atmosphere quite different 
from that which we breathe in the world and in 
the world's literature. In the Bible God is pre- 
sented as doing everything and as being the cause 



Must the Bible Go 97 

and end of everything; and man appears only as 
he stands related to God, either as a revolted 
creature or as the subject of Divine grace. 
Whereas in the world, and in the books which 
contain the history of the world, according to its 
own judgment, man appears to be everything and 
there is as little reference to God as if there were 
no such being in the universe. ,, 

Common sense recognizes this difference and 
exalts the Word of God. The crime of higher 
criticism is that it eliminates God from the Bible 
and exalts the critic. 



98 Must the Bible Go 



"Wellhausen, whom others have followed, pro- 
fesses (Prolegomena, p. 14) to have learned from 
Vatke 'the most and the best' ; but the latter ar- 
rived at his construction of history not by un- 
prejudiced historical investigation, but from his 
purely dogmatic preconceptions on the philosophy 
of religion." — Moller, Are the Critics Right? 

P. 213. . 

"In Wellhausen's review of the history, he has 
much to say of the gradual rise of feasts from the 
presentation of first-fruits, and of their annual 
observance at neighborhood sanctuaries, and the 
growth of larger sanctuaries towards the close of 
the period of the Judges. . . . But the whole 
thing is spun out of his own brain. It is as purely 
fictitious as any astronomical map would be of 
the other side of the moon."— Prof. W. H. Green. 

"The fact remains that other branches of the 
Semitic family ran into mythology, while the He- 
brew race alone was preserved from it." — Profes- 
sor James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel 



CHAPTER VII 

REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 
TRUTH (CONTINUED)— HIGHER CRITI- 
CISM EXPOSED IN THE LIGHT OF 
COMMON SENSE 

Common sense while recognising the difference 
between the Bible and the world's literature is 
quick to perceive the absurdity of the reasoning of 
higher critics when tried upon the latter. Ex- 
amples were cited to show how the documentary 
hypothesis of the critics is demolished by the ap- 
plication of its principles to a writing known to be 
the work of a single hand. The fact that it is pos- 
sible by this method to make such a writing con- 
sist of the work of several authors utterly dis- 
credits that hypothesis and confirms the strong 
evidence supporting the Biblical position. The 
self-assurance of higher critics is their most 
notable characteristic. When they are through 
with the Bible, it is more wonderful than Joseph's 
coat. They resolve writings that possess many 
marks of unity into a patch-work of numerous 

99 



100 Must the Bible Go 

authors — even reducing sentences into fragments 
with manifold origin — and proclaim their product 
true history. We suggest they try their skill on 
some piece of literature that is the joint work of 
two or more hands, and point out the parts com- 
posed by each hand. Not one of them would 
assume to dogmatize concerning the Besant and 
Rice novels as they do about the Pentateuch and 
other portions of the Old Testament. Here is fic- 
tion whose dual authorship they cannot detect. 
Yet they are cock-sure that the Pentateuch is the 
work of many authors and editors and that the 
various fragments must be assigned to this, that, 
and the other unknown person, designated sym- 
bolically as J, E, JE, D, JED, J-i, J-2, J-3, etc., 
P-i, P-2, P-3, etc., R, R-i, R-2, R-3, etc., etc., 
with, no limit set to this addition. Common sense 
is indispensable to a sane, sober criticism and is 
one of the strongest guarantees of the triumph of 
conservative Biblical scholarship. 

G. K. Chesterton, the acute English novelist, 
essayist, critic and philosopher attacks the higher 
critics in a leading magazine under the sarcastic 
caption of "High-Brows and Humbugs/' and 
with merciless logic lays bare their "quackery." 



Must the Bible Go 101 

He declares that the spirit of higher criticism "is, 
in its collective quality, a spirit of hypocrisy and 
impudence. Its principle is to demand for inde- 
cision the most abject worship that was ever of- 
fered to certitude." He hits the homage paid to 
higher critics in this fashion: "Those who sit at 
the feet of the higher critics in literature use the 
language of liberty because it is almost imposed 
on them by law ; but their true atmosphere is not 
liberty or even of the search after truth. They do 
not believe by choice. They doubt by authority." 
Mr. Chesterton's argument embraces an analysis 
of "a learned and skeptical article" on the story of 
Lady Godiva which, he says, "contains every one 
of the vanities, stupidities and falsehoods with 
which I am taxing what is called the higher 
criticism." 

Another example of good lay sense is the fol- 
lowing Canadian newspaper's reply to a destruc- 
tive critic and university professor : — 

"One of the constant sources of amusement to 
every journalist is furnished by the mistakes of 
the critics who think they can pick out the work of 
the various writers on a newspaper. Unless there 
is some special circumstance to guide them, they 



102 Must the Bible Go 

are apt to be astray three times out of four. With 
these examples of the fallibility of literary criti- 
cism, the average journalist will not be disposed 
to 'take much stock' in the claim of the higher 
critics to be able to carve up the books of the Old 
Testament among a number of mythical authors 
and collaborators, claiming that this chapter of 
Genesis was from one source and that from 
another, - that this portion of Isaiah is by one 
author and that by some other, as Dr. George 
Coulson Workman asserts they can do, in a series 
of articles which he is writing for the "Canadian 
Magazine.' While our critics cannot determine 
the authorship of much current literature, while 
they cannot decide who wrote the letters of Junius, 
or whether or not Shakespeare or Bacon wrote 
the famous plays, though they have abundance of 
circumstantial evidence to work upon, they are 
asking too much when they expect the world to 
give up the traditional view of the Scriptures and 
accept their fantastic and far-fetched theories. 
Let the critics show that they can solve some of 
the literary mysteries of the present or the imme- 
diate past before they undertake to dogmatize as 



Must the Bible Go 103 

to the composition of books written thousands of 
years ago." 

Common sense notes the strength of the argu- 
ment from PROBABILITY in favor of the con- 
servative position. So strong is this argument 
that it amounts to a moral certainty against the 
subjective theorizing of higher criticism, stamp- 
ing the conclusions of this school as incredible. It 
is not probable that the Hebrews whose lofty 
monotheistic faith distinguished them from all 
other nations, borrowed from the Babylonians the 
matter contained in the early narratives of Gene- 
sis. It seems to be a settled policy of higher critics 
when any ground for comparison arises between 
Hebrew literature and tradition and those of other 
nations, to hold that the Hebrews were the bor- 
rowers. This is incredible for the reason stated. 
Well may we ask with Prof. James Robertson: 
"Why should we not admit a common primeval 
tradition, when it is thus attested by independent 
witnesses? Nay, seeing that the Hebrew tradi- 
tion, at the very earliest point at which we can 
seize it, is purer and loftier than any other, why 
should it be at all incredible that in that race, from 
pre-Abrahamic times and in the lands from which 



104 Must the Bible Go 

the faith of Abraham was disseminated, there 
were found purer conceptions of God and deeper 
intuitions into His character and operations than 
we find elsewhere — glimmerings of a purer faith 
which had elsewhere become obscured by poly- 
theistic notions and practices ? Do not the results 
of the study of comparative religion tend to show 
that even polytheism is an aberration from a 
simpler conception, and that the lowest forms of 
nature — religion point to a belief in a Being whose 
character always transcends the forms in which 
the untutored mind tries to represent Him, and 
is not summed up in all their attempts to give it 
expression? That being so, why should it be a 
thing incredible that in one quarter, a quarter 
which in the clear light of history is found to stand 
sharply defined from its surroundings, the souls 
of the best should have kept themselves above 
these degradations, and nursed within themselves 
the higher, purer, more primary conception ; and 
that this should have taken shape in the faith of 
Abraham, or if we state it otherwise, formed the 
basis on which the purer faith of Abraham was 
reared? This will not seem incredible to any who 
believe that there is one God and that He has been 



Must the Bible Go 105 

the same from the beginning.' ' {Early Religion 
of Israel ) The same writer observes, in his text- 
book, The Old Testament and Its Contents: "If 
the Hebrew writers have thus preserved so pure 
an account of the manner in which God formed 
the material world, we may give all the more 
credence to them when they speak of God's deal- 
ings with man in history, which is their main 
theme. ,, 

And if it be credible that this pure and lofty 
tradition passed on with other remains of the 
primeval revelation to the time of Moses what 
could be more probable than that this man, whose 
wisdom, learning, and force of character preemi- 
nently fitted him to be both lawgiver and historian, 
should be selected by Almighty God to make a 
record of the facts known and revealed to him? 
Certainly no one in any subsequent age was better 
prepared or a more likely instrument for this 
great work than he. 

The probability of such a selection is enhanced 
to the point of certainty by the "psychological and 
historical incredibilities" with which the critical 
theory is loaded. These are too numerous for 
mention here. We are asked to believe, for ex- 



106 Must the Bible Go 

ample, that the entire wilderness legislation with 
portable tabernacle and practices was the fabrica- 
tion of a time and place wherein it would be im- 
possible of realization; that a work assumed to 
have originated in the age of Josiah with a view 
to effect the centralization of worship, omitted all 
mention of Jerusalem and features of the temple 
service introduced by David; and that — many 
other incredibilities which refute the theory and 
establish the Mosaic authorship of the Penta- 
teuch. 

Prof. Green has put some of these incredible 
situations so well that we quote : "Laws are never 
issued to regulate a state of things which has 
passed away ages before and can by no possibility 
be revived. What are we to think, then, of a hy- 
pothesis which assigns the code of Deuteronomy 
to the reign of Josiah, or shortly before it, when 
its injunction to exterminate the Canaanites and 
the Amalekites, who had long since disappeared, 
would be as utterly out of date as a law in New 
Jersey at the present time offering a bounty for 
killing wolves and bears or royal proclamation 
in Great Britain ordering the expulsion of the 
Danes? A law contemplating foreign conquests 



Must the Bible Go 107 

would have been absurd when the urgent question 
was whether Judah could maintain its own exist- 
ence againt the encroachments of Babylon and 
Egypt. A law discriminating against Ammon 
and Moab, in favor of Edom had its warrant in 
the Mosaic period, but not in the time of the later 
kings. Jeremiah discriminates precisely the other 
way, promising a future restoration to Moab and 
Ammon which he denies to Edom who is also to 
Joel, Obadiah, and Isaiah the representative foe 

of God's people The allusions to Egypt 

imply familiarity with and recent residence in that 

land And how can a code belong to 

the time of Josiah, which, while it contemplates 
the possible selection of a king in the future no- 
where implies an actual regal government, but 
vests the supreme central authority in a judge and 
the priesthood, which lays special stress on the re- 
quirements that the king must be a native and not 
a foreigner, when the undisputed line of succes- 
sion had for ages been fixed in the family of 
David, and that he must not 'cause the people to 
return to Egypt' as they seemed ready to do on 
every grievance in the days of Moses, but which 



108 Must the Bible Go 

no one ever dreamed of doing after they were 
fairly established in Canaan ?" 

But the critics must somehow explain the bare- 
faced forgeries, and this is Wellhausen's venture: 

"One can characterize the entire Priestly Code 
as the wilderness legislation, inasmuch as it ab- 
stracts from the natural conditions and motives 
of the actual life of the people in the land of 
Canaan, and rears the hierocracy on the tabula 
rasa of the wilderness, the negation of nature, by 
means of the bald statutes of arbitrary abso- 
lutism.^ 

Now this is not history; it is -fiction, unmixed 
with suggestions of reality, such as invested 
Scott's historical romances with the shadow of 
credibility. This is to abolish history and substi- 
tute conjecture for fact. It is, moreover, to re- 
quire us to believe that the time of Israel's 
decadence and corruption was the most auspicious 
time to originate an extensive religious code, for 
which there is no parallel in the history of man- 
kind. On the contrary, every example of national 
and religious growth and decay disproves the sup- 
position. 



Must the Bible Go 109 

"If the great events of the Exodus, the conquest 
of Canaan, and in general the experiences which 
had made them a nation did not impress the na- 
tional consciousness when it was plastic and fresh, 
are we to suppose that, for the first time when for- 
eign nations were about to sweep them away, they 
began to read into their worship and ceremonial a 
meaning which had not occurred to them for cen- 
turies ? If at a time when Hosea and Amos were 
reminding them of the days of the youth of the 
nation, and thus appealing to the strongest motives 
that could influence them — if at such a time there 
were many feasts and imposing rituals, are we to 
suppose that not once in all these was there a com- 
memoration of the founding of the nation, and of 
the achievement of the nation's success ? No doubt 
the feasts, at such times as those of Hosea and 
Amos, would be overlaid with superstitious ob- 
servances. But that is not the point. Because the 
modern Greeks at Jerusalem make Easter a time 
of riot, are we to conclude that Easter does not 
commemorate the resurrection? What country 
has not at one time or another, thus buried its 
holiest associations under carnal and sensuous 
forms ? All this does not suffice to show that the 



110 Must the Bible Go 

better meaning does not underlie the institution ; 
much less that a better meaning is merely an after- 
thought, read into an empty form, just because it 
is empty. Forms are never empty in the strict 
sense. They are full of something. The corrupt 
must be purged out before the clean can be poured 
in ; and we can find no time in Israel's history at 
which a tabula rasa was formed, and history made 
out of nothing." (Prof. Robertson's Early Re- 
ligion of Israel) 

The same learned author, in this masterpiece 
of reasoning, convicts the critics of falsifying his- 
tory in the following cogent manner : — 

"The men who moulded the history of Israel 
were the men who had most to do with the pro- 
duction and preservation of the national litera- 
ture. We know what sort of men they were. But 
on the modern theory, the greatest characters in 
Israel's history, instead of being spontaneous 
actors in a great life drama, are merely posturing 
and acting a part on a stage. What they give us 
as history is merely their fond idea of what his- 
tory should have been ; in many cases it is not even 



Must the Bible Go 111 

so much, but pure invention to give a show of an- 
tiquity to what had to be accounted for and mag- 
nified in their own day. History was never made 
in this way. Men that make history such as 
Israel's history was, are intent on great purposes, 
moved by noble ends ; but what we are asked to 
contemplate at the great crises and turning-points 
is a set of men thinking how they will elaborate 
a scheme of history. Fictions become the greatest 
facts, and the French critic has carried out the 
theory to its true conclusion when he ascribes the 
great bulk of the Hebrew literature to the free 
creation of a school of theologians after the 
exile." 

Common sense holds it is incredible that pro- 
phetic teaching should precede the priestly legis- 
lation. The natural order is always the reverse 
of this. Principles of law and religion are first 
laid down and then arise those whose duty it is to 
expound and apply those principles. The prophets 
were reformers, not originators. When the na- 
tional conscience became lax and religious wor- 
ship degenerated into formalism or idolatry, the 



112 Must the Bible Go 

prophets denounced, not the national ordinances 
of religion, but their perversion, and emphasized 
the spirit of worship as that which made the form 
acceptable. To quote Dr. Adolph Saphir : 

"But what had the judges and the prophets to 
do but to refer back again to that perfect revela- 
tion which God had given to them, in Moses? 
And if it had not been for that revelation through 
Moses, and for a written record of that revelation 
which was acknowledged to be authentic, Samuel 
and all the prophets would have been utterly help- 
less and without strength, in the face of an idola- 
trous and sinful nation. . . . Their watchword 
was 'Repentance/ 'Seek ye out the old paths/ 
'Remember the law which my servant Moses 
gave unto you on Mount Horeb/ " 

The critical contention that the priestly legis- 
lation followed the work of the prophets con- 
tradicts the insistence with which they point 
to a better sacrifice and a better cleansing for 
heart and conscience than the blood of bulls and 
goats. If they continually looked beyond the Le- 
vitical sacrifices to something which these sacri- 
fices foreshadowed, how can they be placed before 
the sacrificial system ? They were the true expos- 



Must the Bible Go 113 

itors of the system, unfolding its typical nature 
and announcing its spiritual destination. 

There is one argument so void of respectability 
that we almost feel like apologizing for its repro- 
duction here. Yet it is worth while to expose the 
straits to which the critics are driven to make out 
a case. The argument is that which arises against 
the genuineness of certain writings from their 
violation or non-observance. Universal history 
could be falsified by this reasoning. A noted in- 
stance of its shallowness occurs in the case of the 
laws and institutions of Charlemagne, which had 
disappeared before the close of the century in 
which he died. "Those who have studied the 
charters, laws, and chronicles of the later Car- 
lovingian Princes most diligently are unanimous 
in declaring that they indicate either an absolute 
ignorance or an entire forgetfulness of the legis- 
lation of Charlemagne." The remarkable case of 
the loss and finding of the original manuscript of 
Luther's lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, is 
also in point. All Europe had been ransacked to 
locate it. From one library after another, says 
Professor Johann Ficker of the University of 



114 Must the Bible Go 

Strasburg, who conducted the search, the royal 
library at Berlin included, came the report that 
no trace of it was to be found. Yet several years 
later he was astonished to be informed that the 
manuscript whose existence in answer to his 
written inquiries, had been specifically denied 
(and for a copy of which he had made three trips 
to Rome) was in the Berlin library, in a show 
case! 

Does this bear any likeness to the finding of 
the Book of the Law in the Temple during the 
reign of Josiah, which the critics would have us 
believe is a forgery, though it purports to be the 
work of Moses and with a wilderness framework 
of legislation out of date and place in that late 
age? 

If the argument from the non-observance or 
violation of law is valid against its existence, the 
work of the Protestant Reformer can be shown to 
be a fabrication upon a hypothetical doctrine, and 
the writings of Paul share with those of Moses 
the stigma of lying imposture. 

These are specimens of the learned nonsense by 
which it is sought to make an end of the Bible as 



Must the Bible Go 115 

an authoritative revelation of God, in the interests 
of sheer naturalism. They could be multiplied, 
but no purpose would be served by the act. 



116 Must the Bible Go 



"If lying and deception have a share every time 
that new forces arise in the development, it is 
only a well-meant self-deception to believe that 
we can hold to a revelation along with this ; this 
self-deception must, however, be the more unhesi- 
tatingly exposed the more dangerous it is, and 
the more, under its protection, the foundation on 
which we stand is undermined." — Moller, Are 
the Critics Right? 

"I am struck with the absence of any sign of an 
experience distinctively Christian in many of 
those who discuss the sanctuaries of the Christian 
faith. . . . Some of these scholars, to judge 
from their writings alone, do not seem even so 
much as to have heard of a Holy Ghost. And 
they have a fatal dread of pietism and methodism, 
and most forms of intensely personal evangelical 
faith. They are, like Haeckel, in their own way, 
the victims of an intellectualism which means 
spiritual atrophy to Christianity at last." — For- 
syth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. 
195. 



CHAPTER VIII 

REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 
TRUTH (CONTINUED)— HIGHER CRITI- 
CISM EXPOSED IN THE LIGHT OF 
COMMON SENSE 

Common Sense affirms that the Bible writers 
were honest men and that their writings are free 
from make-believe. THE CRITICAL THEORY 
HOLDS THERE CAN BE HONEST FOR- 
GERIES ! The Deuteronomic and Priestly writ- 
ings were fabricated "in the interest of a religious 
propaganda/' The view is not that these writ- 
ings contain inadvertencies, unintentional mis- 
takes, or that they "are avowedly religious fiction, 
parables, stories framed for religious teaching, 
and so understood from the first," but that "the 
D. and P. writers deliberately published what pur- 
ported to be history," when in fact "this alleged 
history was largely invented for the purpose of 
making it appear, falsely,, that certain religious 
ideas and practices of their own invention had 
existed from ancient times, and had been handed 
117 



118 Must the Bible Go 

down to them;" that they "deliberately promul- 
gated an untrue history of the religion of Israel, 
with the intention of having it accepted as true." 
"One has got to choose," forcibly remarks Prof. 
Willis J. Beecher, whose statement of the modern 
view we have quoted, "between this and the opin- 
ion that the Scriptures are truthful; he cannot 
hold both." 

Protest as they may, those who accept the 
contentions of Wellhausen, Driver & Co., nul- 
lify their profession of faith in the inspiration 
of the Scriptures, and make the eternal Spirit a 
party to the most stupendous fraud in the history 
of the world. It is the habit of such writers to 
talk of different standards of literary honesty in 
those days. It is sufficient to reply that men like 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ezra and Zachariah 
who lived when these Old Testament frauds are 
said to have been perpetrated were "as capable of 
distinguishing between truth and falsehood, as 
conscious of the sin of deceit, as jealous for the 
honor of God, as incapable of employing lying lips 
or a lying pen in the service of Jehovah as any of 
our critics today." Equally strong words are 
needed to characterize that strange perversion of 



Must the Bible Go 119 

reason and conscience that leads a man to write, as 
does the author of "Inspiration and the Bible," 
that tho' certain Epistles should be forgeries, they 
have "an intrinsic value" that they "remain a 
possession for the church, a light and an instruc- 
tion, a revelation tho' the writer should be some 
unknown disciple of the great apostle, who wrote 
as he was moved by the Holy Ghost but preferred 
to write under the name of his Master rather than 
obtruding his own personality" To the exclama- 
tion of the astonished Bible reader that "this 
questioning of Pauline authorship would repre- 
sent the letters as forgeries and impostures," he 
says: "The answer of that difficulty is to be 
found in the better knowledge of the literary 
practice of the Ancient World. It is perfectly 
certain that a disciple of St. Paul, anxious to com- 
municate his Master's teaching to the churches 
would not hesitate to veil his own hand under the 
form of a letter from his Master ; what we should 
call 'forgery' he would call modesty." 

Now, to say nothing of the difficulty of getting 
churches that were familiar with Pauline Epistles 
to receive as genuine an imposture, it is not "per- 
fectly certain" that a disciple of Paul or any other 



120 Must the Bible Go 

person with a conscience enlightened and purified 
by the Spirit of God, would forge a writing and 
call it "modesty." It is morally inconceivable 
that there should have been a different standard 
of ethics in the apostolic or post-apostolic church 
when the Holy Spirit manifested the presence and 
power of God in such intensity and illumination, 
than in the modern church when Christian min- 
isters and teachers can calmly write such a libel 
against Him. The case of Ananias and Sapphira 
shows how far from moving men to write a lie 
was the Spirit of truth and holiness. The balance 
is in favor of the early church. The claim of Dr. 
Horton and the rest of the school is utterly erro- 
neous and preposterous, and would leave us no 
ethical standard whatever. For if the New Tes- 
tament cannot furnish us such a standard, we 
would look in vain for one. How portentous to 
the church and religious life of the future is such 
a perversion of New Testament ethics, it is not 
difficult to see. We denounce such teaching as 
Satanic and destructive of the very foundations 
of faith, and we refuse to have fellowship with 
those who lend themselves to its propagation. 
These remarks demand increased emphasis 



Must the Bible Go 121 

when applied to our Lord's positive declarations 
concerning those books of the Old Testament 
which the critics assert are forgeries. It is one of 
the surest marks of moral eclipse when men pro- 
fess faith in the Son of God and yet make Him 
perpetuate, what on their theory is a fraud. As 
Bishop Copleston, late Metropolitan of India, 
said : "It is hardly possible to imagine any accu- 
mulation of probabilities of the lower kind which 
would not be brushed away in a moment by the 
improbability that Almighty God should have 
used a conscious literary forgery for the purpose 
for which He has used the book of Deuteronomy." 

Finally, common sense judges the modern view 
by its fruits which are plainly evil. It rejects this 
pretentious reasoning of the critics because it 
destroys evangelical faith and divests the church 
of real spiritual power. 

Every age has its own needs and demands a 
message suited to the hour. But the same mes- 
sage may be required again and again, for there 
is often a recrudescence of error. This fact makes 
the Bible perennially fresh. The polemics of Paul 
and John are as vital and applicable today as 
when they were delivered against the legalists 



122 Must the Bible Go 

and Gnostics of the ist century. It is sometimes 
said by way of apology for the critical assaults on 
the integrity of the Holy Scriptures that changed 
conditions call for a re-statement of the truth. 
But it is the truth, not its semblance or substitute, 
that must be stated again. Truth never changes ; 
but error assumes new guises and is to be met not 
by some new theory about the truth, but by the 
naked reality. 

It is the failure to insist upon this fact and the 
folly of compromising the claims of truth, that 
frequently accounts for "changed conditions." 
There would be no occasion for the feverish haste 
observed in some institutions to adjust views con- 
cerning the Bible to the conclusions of a ration- 
alistic criticism, if those who are set for the 
defense and confirmation of the truth would keep 
the faith and refuse to surrender the principle of 
inspiration or to soften its claims. The Bible 
would vindicate itself as the directing power of 
every epoch and the solution of every problem. 
I have a conviction that the overmastering ques- 
tion in our day is not social, but biblical; not 
whether they are social exigencies, but whether 
there will soon be anything to meet them. 



Must the Bible Go 123 

Dr. Forsyth, in the work above mentioned, thus 
speaks in the chapter on 'The Preacher and the 
Age:" "I say that in the present state of the 
Church, and certainly for the sake of the pulpit, 
its ministers, and its future, theology is a greater 
need than philanthropy. Because men do not 
know where they are. They are only steering by 
dead reckoning — when anything may happen. 
But theology is 'taking the sun/ And it is won- 
derful — it is dangerous — how few of our officers 
can use the sextant for themselves. Yet what is 
the use of captains who are more at home enter- 
taining the passengers than navigating the ship. 
The theology of the Bible is but the moral ade- 
quacy and virility of the word of the Cross and 
the thews of a powerful Gospel. A theology 
chiefly curious or speculative, a secondary the- 
ology, may be left to the leisure of the schools; 
but a theology of experienced Grace, primary 
theology, is of the essence of the Gospel. And it 
is not merely of the bene esse, it is of the esse of 
the Church." 

To think the problems of the hour can be 
solved by an emasculated Bible is the madness of 
casting away the sheet anchor in the midst of a 



124 MubT the Bible Go 

storm. One of the most solemn reminders of this 
fact is the sad confession of Dr. Marcus Dods, a 
distinguished Scotch critic, whose experience il- 
lustrates the disintegrating effect of this system 
of thought. 

Among the published letters are found these 
expressions : "I am a backslider. I used to enjoy 
prayer, but for years I have found myself dumb. 
Of course one can always make a prayer, but 
prayer in the sense of asking for things has not 
been in my case a proved force. I pray now not 
because my own experience gives me any en- 
couragement, but because of Christ's example 
and command. I wish I could live as a spectator 
through the next generation to see what they are 
going to make of things. There will be a grand 
turnup in matters theological, and the churches 
won't know themselves fifty years hence. It is 
to be hoped some little rag of faith may be left 
when all is done. For my own part I am some- 
times entirely under water and see no sky at all." 

This confirms our thought regarding the 
question of the hour. Can we cope with the com- 
plicated situation of modern social life if we sub- 
stitute for an infallible, authoritative revelation a 



Must the Bible Go 125 

mere patchwork of men's devising with scarcely 
"a rag of faith left," and with nothing at all to 
make the dull conscience of the age respond to 
higher issues ? There is coming on a generation 
of preachers and thinkers to whom the inspiration 
of Isaiah and of Paul is not different from that 
of any great genius; who regard the Bible as 
part of the world's literature, nothing more, and 
who are uncertain about the great facts of sin and 
redemption and the miraculous elements these in- 
volve; mere negative characters confronted by 
positive problems and without a vital, saving mes- 
sage for a perishing world. Any one can see that 
if there has been no moral fall, no spiritual ruin 
as the Scriptures teach, there is no demand for the 
miraculous system of the New Testament, no 
basis for the virgin birth of Christ, no such mean- 
ing to sin as would necessitate the principle and 
fact of expiation, as the atonement has been 
understood by the profoundest thinkers of the 
past. The integrity of the New Testament is 
bound up with the historical character of the Old 
Testament, especially with those very portions 
which the critics declare are derived from "the 
raw material of myth and legend" (Prof. Geo. 



126 Must the Bible Go 

Adam Smith). Any reverent mind can see that 
the Bible is a vast remedial scheme for an awful 
catastrophe in the life of man ; that the early chap- 
ters of Genesis contain the only consistent, reli- 
able account of that catastrophe; and that 
throughout the Bible there runs a great purpose 
in the call and separation of individuals, in the 
organization of a nation with certain religious 
rites and phenomena, and through that nation 
the coming of an unparalleled character with a 
teaching and a mission positively declared to be 
the answer to what is recorded as fact in the Pen- 
tateuch. Now if the evolutionary hypothesis of 
the critics be true; if there has been no fall of 
man, but on the contrary a gradual development 
from a state of animalism, and if the religious 
history of Israel has been simply a human rather 
than a supernatural development, what becomes 
of the entire New Testament claim ? Can Chris- 
tianity as set before us in the Gospels and Epistles 
rest upon fiction ? Can the solemn mystery of the 
Cross have an adequate explanation in the alle- 
gorizing fancy of uninspired men who dealt in 
myths and legends ? The whole New Testament 
is resolved into a series of pictures, 



Must the Bible Go 127 

"As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean." 

And those self-styled evangelicals who deny 
with the critics the historical character of the 
Genesis narratives, are self-stultified when they 
profess belief in the fact of redemption as taught 
in the New Testament. They only are consistent 
who go with the radicals all the way and reject 
in toto the doctrine of inspiration and the facts of 
man's creation in holiness and subsequent fall 
into sin and ruin. 

This is why Socinianism is taking possession 
of many whose church connection involves an 
obligation i?o maintain doctrines they no longer 
unhesitatingly accept. And this is why, if the 
remark of Dr. Bitting, Baptist pastor in St. Louis, 
be true, "there will never be another Ingersoll on 
the lecture platform. ,, Certainly not, when his 
place is taken by men who occupy the pulpits of 
the land. Certainly not, while Theological Semi- 
naries reek with the refuse of German rational- 
ism. But what will the church do in the end 
thereof? The harvest of such sowing will not 
fully come in the generation of the sower. Teach- 



128 Must the Bible Go 

ers whose habits of religion were formed under 
special evangelical influence may continue to 
practice the virtues of faith in spite of logical 
inconsistency, when students receiving from them 
their doctrinal bias will go on to the logical end 
of such teaching. And the radicalism of the stu- 
dents will become the standard of the masses. 
Phillips Brooks in his "Lectures on Preaching" 
observes:, "There is nothing stranger than to 
watch how the intelligent speculations of the 
learned become the vague prejudices of the vul- 
gar. You can shut up nothing within the 
scholars study door. For good or for mischief 
all that the wise are thinking becomes in some 
form or other the basis upon which the ignorant 
live." 

People will not care for the Bible if it is no 
more than a human book. As the New York 
Sun put it: "The Bishops and other clergy who 
are undertaking to reconcile the destruction of 
the infallibility of the Bible with the dogma and 
doctrine of their theology have entered upon an 
impossible task. They scuttle the ship, yet expect 
the crew to continue confident in its seaworthi- 
ness." 



Must the Bible Go 129 

No wonder so many refuse to come aboard the 
ship, and the manning of the vessel is becoming 
problematical. A dearth of Protestant ministers 
in Germany, the home of higher criticism, is re- 
ported. The Alte Glaube of Leipzig, said to be 
the ablest of the orthodox church papers, thus 
speaks of the situation in that land : 

"It is not many years since the graduates of the 
Protestant theological faculties were compelled 
to beg for positions in the state churches, and 
often these young men were forced to wait as 
long as a dozen years before they could receive 
an appointment. Now all this is changed. The 
congregations are begging for pastors and 
preachers, the theological auditoriums are de- 
serted and empty benches are the rule. For this 
condition the radical theology is chiefly to blame. 
In recent years the radicals have gained the 
upper hand in practically every theological fac- 
ulty. It is reliably reported that among all the 
theological teachers of Protestant Germany there 
is only one who believes in the verbal inspiration 
of the Scriptures. ****** Every- 
where do we find the fundamentals and essentials 
of the Christian religion denied — the Trinity, the 



130 Must the Bible Go 

divinity of Christ, the work of atonement. The 
religious geschichtliche school, now in control, 
seeks to explain Christianity as the product of the 
religious factors and forces that prevailed in the 
Graeco-Roman and the Jewish world at the time 
of the New Testament, and thus to eliminate the 
idea of revelation. Professor Kruger, the church 
historian of Giessen, recently declared that it was 
the duty of the theological teacher to "endanger 
the souls" of his students. The fact of the matter 
is that he and his kind have made it impossible 
for earnest young men to study theology, for they 
are taught to deny and to reject the very truths 
on which the church is based and for which it 
must stand or fall. Many a young man has gone 
to the university earnest in the faith and anxious 
to serve the church, and has been shipwrecked by 
what he learned at the feet of savants in these 
institutions. It is a significant fact that the fa- 
mous philanthropist, Pastor von Bodelschwingh, 
has established at Bielefeld a special school of 
theology for those candidates whose faith has 
been undermined in the universities. Modern 
radical theology, as enthroned at the universities, 
is the chief cause of the danger that is threaten- 



Must the Bible Go 131 

ing the very existence of the church in the land 
of Luther." 

This dearth is beginning to manifest itself in 
other Protestant countries. The result is inevi- 
table where higher criticism is fostered by pulpit 
and seminary. Why should young men wish to 
enter the ministry, when they will have nothing 
but negations to preach? And why indeed can 
they be expected, under the circumstances, to 
show any interest in this calling? 

The decline of church membership is the cor- 
relate of ministerial decline. As Prof. Sayce is 
reported to have said: "The higher criticism 
saves no souls." Churches infected with this un- 
belief may be social clubs, but their mission as 
soul savers is gone; and if a man is fortunate 
enough to hear an evangelist whose preaching 
and faith brings him to Christ, there is little help 
for his spiritual life in one of these churches. 
Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman says he received a letter 
from a minister who asked him to send them an 
evangelist, adding: "He must be an evangelist 
on the old line, believing in the inspiration of the 
Scriptures and the atonement of Christ. I am 
not able to accept these truths fully myself, and 



132 Must the Bible Go 

therefore I am not a soul winner. Every man 
that has joined my church for five years has come 
under the influence of such an evangelist pastor 
as I now want you to send me." What a confes- 
sion ! 

But the destruction of faith and loss of spiritual 
power are not the final consequences of this mod- 
ern teaching. With the moral imperative sup- 
plied by an infallible Bible, gone, a reign of law- 
lessness ensues. How else account for the in- 
crease of crime and social disorder ? A German 
student of these problems said: "Germany is 
now reaping the harvest of advanced thought: 
the prisons are full" And one of the eminent 
and devout statesmen of America, a justice of 
the, Supreme Court of the U. S., addressing a 
company of preachers, said : "You ministers are 
making a fatal mistake in not holding forth before 
men as prominently as the previous generation 
did, the retributive justice of God. You are 
fallen into a sentimental style of rhapsodizing 
over the love of God and you are not appealing 
to that fear of future punishment which your 
Lord and Master made such a prominent element 
in His preaching. And we are seeing the effects 



Must the Bible Go 133 

of it in the widespread demoralization of private 
virtue and corruption of the public conscience 
throughout the land." 

To meet this situation the ministry and church, 
instead of casting off the devices of higher criti- 
cism and returning to the source of wisdom and 
power, keep adding wheels and cogs to the church 
machinery and work the social idea more strenu- 
ously. Vain substitution! Nothing but faith in 
a book that brings to us the final, authoritative 
word as to sin and redemption can clothe the 
church with the power of rebuke and conviction 
and fill men with the spirit of self-sacrifice. In 
the language of a French pastor who writes of 
why the ministry is insufficiently recruited: 
"Here is my conclusion. When one amuses one- 
self by clipping the wings of a bird, flight soon 
becomes impossible to it. Thanks to the discus- 
sion, to the negations which are everywhere ped- 
dled about, our christian wings have been cut. 
Give again to our young people, the families of 
our Evangelical Churches, the wings of a vital 
faith in the redeeming Lord, and then the holy 
enthusiasm for Him and His great cause will 
bring back the days of the past" 



134 Must the Bible Go 



"Even if it were demonstrated to a certainty 
that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, that would not 
make the critical school a whit more ready to ac- 
cept its statements. The course of New Testa- 
ment criticism furnishes an illustration of what is 
possible in a case like this. Though the Gospels 
are proved to be of so early a date that the writers 
could have had knowledge of the things they pro- 
fess to relate, the modern advanced critics of the 
New Testament do not feel themselves bound on 
that account to receive the books as historical. 
They have to make allowance for the bias of the 
writer even when the writer is a contemporary; 
and if he relates events which they consider can- 
not have occurred, his account is rejected as in- 
credible." — Prof. James Robertson, D. D., The 
Early Religion of Israel. 

"In no other sphere would men listen to what 
passes for proof when Scripture is assailed. In no 
other sphere would such trifling as this be tol- 
erated. If only these men could be "got into 
court/' and be subjected to cross-examination 
they would lose not only their case but their rep- 
utation !"— Sir Robert Anderson, K. C. B.,LL.D. 
(a learned Att'y at Law, London, England). 



CHAPTER IX 

THE ETHICAL PERVERSIONS OF 
HIGHER CRITICISM. 

One of the deplorable accompaniments of 
higher criticism is the loss of the ethical sense. 
What else can account for the amazing belief that 
the forgery of a document, the appropriation of 
another man's name to float one's ideas, was per- 
fectly allowable and in accord with divine prin- 
ciples of inspiration and teaching? The founders 
and leaders of this school of unbelief are con- 
sistent at least in their bold contention for this 
asserted practice of Biblical writers; for they 
deny there is any revelation or inspiration in the 
Scriptures, and they utterly reject miracles. Yet 
even apart from the question of revelation and 
inspiration no honest man would accept this view 
of getting one's writing before the public, or, in 
other words, call a forgery an honest piece of 
business. If he were a fool, incapable of making 
moral distinctions, he might call black white and 
good evil ; in that case, however, the term honesty 

135 



136 Must the Bible Go 

as well as intelligence would be inapplicable, since 
reason and morality go together. We do not 
predicate honesty or dishonesty of brutes, idiots 
and babies. While, therefore, we may say the 
original framers and propagators of the forgery 
theory are consistent with their rejection of the 
traditional view that the Scriptures were super- 
naturally inspired, it is nevertheless impossible to 
harmonize that theory with sound ethics, for the 
reason that the writings forged are not repre- 
sented or meant to be understood as fiction en- 
forcing truth, but as the veritable work of the 
men whose names they bear. They were, in fact, 
on the theory stated, intended to deceive people. 
So one of the greatest of these original critics 
said, in reference to the inconsistency of accept- 
ing his hypothesis and claiming at the same time 
to believe in the supernatural origin of the Scrip- 
tures : "I have proved the Old Testament to be 
a fraud, but never dreamt as these Scotch fellows 
do, of making God a party to the fraud." 

And here is the tragedy of this critical propa- 
ganda. It is- when men professing to be evan- 
gelical, to believe in the Scriptures as divinely 
inspired and to respect the authority of Christ 



Must the Bible Go 137 

and His apostles, accept and teach a theory de- 
structive of these facts, that the perversion of the 
ethical sense is painfully apparent to all who be- 
lieve that God is not the Author of sin and cannot 
be a party to fraud of any kind. It is another 
illustration of the fact to which history has borne 
witness so many times, that error blinds the judg- 
ment and reduces men to a state of moral obtuse- 
ness in which they are incapable of seeing things 
in their right relations. 

This perversion of the conscience is seen in the 
declaration, which is repeated with much em- 
phasis, that scholars agree as to the correctness 
of the Wellhausen theory, while facts to the con- 
trary are concealed. It is false that scholars 
agree, as claimed, that there are none, competent 
to speak on this question, who hold the traditional 
view of the Bible. The fact is the critical hypoth- 
esis is rapidly falling into disrepute in countries 
where it once held sway and scholars are throw- 
ing off the incubus, while many of the ablest 
thinkers in other lands have never "bowed the 
knee to Baal." It is concealment of this fact, or 
unsupported assumption to the contrary, that 
makes the agents of this propaganda morally un- 



138 Must the Bible Go 

sound and scripturally unsafe. A writer in the 
London Churchman, giving a summary of the 
"Recent Continental Criticism of the Higher 
Criticism" describes "the boycott of books and 
studies hostile to Wellhausenism which has left 
opinion in England and America so largely in the 
dark, as to the real situation abroad." An able 
German scholar, Moller, in the preface to his un- 
answerable work "Are the Critics Right?" de- 
clares that when he was himself a believer in the 
Wellhausen theory, students were urged not to 
read arguments against the theory, and that his 
return to sanity on this question was due to 
throwing off the yoke of subserviency to the 
higher critics and of becoming fair to their oppo- 
nents. When he gave candid consideration to 
arguments for the conservative view, and pur- 
sued his studies along lines that opened to him, 
he became convinced of the correctness of this 
view. This case is cited to show the want of fair- 
ness in the teaching of higher criticism, and such 
a want betrays the loss or perversion of the eth- 
ical sense. 



Must the Bible Go 139 

A still more lamentable illustration of this loss 
is the conduct of men who have accepted the con- 
clusions of higher criticism and yet continue to 
enjoy the honors and emoluments of positions in 
churches whose doctrines they are pledged to 
maintain. From these positions of ease and com- 
fort, they assault "the faith of our fathers" and 
seek to turn over the Church to the enemies of 
Revelation. If they were honest they would 
abandon the evangelical entrenchments and fight 
"in the open" against what they no longer be- 
lieve. As the Watchman reports, the Bishops of 
Derby and Ossory in England have stated the 
matter clearly in answering some who protested 
against the dropping of a clergyman because he 
did not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. They 
say it is not a matter of liberty but of honesty. 
"It is a transparent fallacy to confound liberty of 
thought with indifference to contract." A man 
who no longer receives the Scriptures at their 
face value, as the Church demands, but reduces 
them to a heap of fragments with their spiritual 
unity and supernatural authority destroyed, and 
who in this work of destruction sets aside the 
positive statements of the Lord Jesus Christ as 



140 Must the Bible Go 

having no value whatever in weighing the con- 
clusions above mentioned — such a man has no 
right to be in the evangelical camp. To tolerate 
him is treason to Christ. A church that harbors 
him has lost something more than its first love. 
Its conscience is gone! He who "holdeth the 
seven stars in His right hand and walketh in the 
midst of the seven golden candlesticks/' would 
never say to it, "I know thy works and thy toil 
and patience and that thou canst not bear them 
who are evil and thou hast tried them who call 
themselves apostles and they are not, and hast 
found them liars." 

In view of all the facts the words of Dr. Jay 
Benson Hamilton are none too strong : 

"The issue is clearly drawn between the pseudo 
scholars who have betrayed their trust and the 
young ministers whom they have deceived, on the 
one side, and the teachers and workers in the 
Sunday schools and the average church members 
and the great body of the ministry upon the other. 
The latter instead of surrendering and consent- 
ing to the discrediting of the Book and the de- 
struction of the Church have a much easier and 
simpler thing to do. Dismiss those who have 



Must the Bible Go 141 

proven themselves untrue to their ordination 
vows and find new teachers who are pious enough 
to abstain from perjury. The young ministers 
will outgrow their child's disease of doubt and be 
saved to the Church if they are worth saving." 

Note : My attention has been called to an arti- 
cle which appeared in the Expositor for Decem- 
ber, 1913, by Professor Adam C. Welsh, on 
"The Present Position of Old Testament Criti- 
cism." In that article the following explanation 
is made of how the Wellhausen theory came to be 
so successful and so widely accepted: 

"The Wellhausen theory was framed under the 
influence of certain dominant conceptions as to 
the origin and growth of religion which were 
then current. In part it owed its success to the 
simple fact that it thus fell in with the Zeitgeist. 
Evolution was in the air, and the theory seemed 
to apply evolution to the development of the He- 
brew religion. But evolution with laws borrowed 
from the physical order is apt to blunder badly 
when it is applied to religion at all, and especially 
to blunder when it is applied to the Hebrew re- 
ligion which gives so large a space to prophecy." 

Let the reader reflect upon the following state- 
ments made by Professor Welsh, himself a critic, 
and observe how they confirm everything I have 
said about the arbitrary and unfair treatment of 



142 Must the Bible Go 

the Scriptures by the critics. (The italics are 
mine.) 

"The theory submitted the prophets to a 
scheme of evolution which had not been patient 
enough to learn the laws of development of re- 
ligion from religion itself. As a result, certain 
elements in their teaching were ignored, other 
elements were ruled out." 

"The theory could find no room in its view of 
how religion develops from such a factor, and 
so, sometimes with an uneasy conscience, that 
factor in the Hebrew faith was ignored" 

"When the prophets declared, as they do with 
one voice, that they said these things in virtue of 
a deeper knowledge of God and His will, their 
testimony was ignored. They were either deceiv- 
ing themselves or saying things which they really 
did not quite mean" 

"There were passages in the prophets in which 
these spoke of the day of the Lord, as implying 
an intervention direct and immediate to set up a 
new order in the world which was under their 
God's power. These also were inconvenient to 
the theory. . . . All such sayings which im- 
plied a relation between God and a world must 
be late. But the passages also offended because 
men had formed the prophets in their own like- 
ness. Believing themselves in a long slow proc- 
ess, they believed that the prophets must have 



Must the Bible Go 143 

held the same thing. That God should intervene 
directly meant a break in the chain of evolution." 

"Hence the passages which implied a different 
view were watered down or explained away. 
. . . So there came to be common a violent 
and often painfully arbitrary treatment of the 
text of the prophets. They were cut to pieces and 
assigned to many dates." 

"I think it is no exaggeration to say that the 
result has been to cast a very strong suspicion, in 
calmer minds, on the worth of the whole critical 
movement" 

And he adds that "through the later work of 
the Wellhausen school of criticism the distinctive 
character of the Hebrew religion seemed to be in 
danger of disappearing altogether." 



144 Must the Bible Go 

Speaking of the reported decline in Church 
membership in England, Dr. Forsyth says that 
the real cause is the decay "in personal religion 
of a positive and experienced kind, and often in 
the pulpit;" and that "decay in membership of the 
Church is due to decay of membership in Christ. 
Even among those who remain in active member- 
ship of our Churches, the type of religion has 
changed, the sense of sin can hardly be appealed 
to by preachers now, and to preach grace is in 
many (even orthodox) quarters regarded as 
theological obsession, and the wrong language 
for the hour, while justification by faith is prac- 
tically obsolete. ,, — The Cruciality of the Cross. 

Dr. Denney, perhaps the greatest theologian 
in Scotland, said at the memorable Edinburgh 
Missionary Conference, that the United Free 
Church had increased its membership only by one 
person for every two congregations in five years, 
and continued: "The number of candidates for 
the ministry is much smaller at the present time 
than it was a good many years ago ; it is hardly 
a sufficient number to keep up the staff at home, 
to say nothing of supplying men abroad. Men are 
not coming forward as ministers, nor coming for- 
ward as missionaries, because they are not coming 
forward into the membership of the Church at all. 
Something must happen to the Church at home if 
it is going even to look at the work that has been 
put upon it by the Conference." 



CHAPTER X 

FRUIT OF HIGHER CRITICISM AND 
THE NEW THEOLOGY 

The reader's attention has already been di- 
rected to the spiritual decline which follows the 
inculcation of advanced critical and theological 
views as proof of their falsity. The infinite 
author of truth will not put His seal upon error 
and continue to pour spiritual blessings upon 
churches that hold low views of inspiration and 
weaken the authority of the Holy Scriptures. It 
is becoming more and more evident, whatever 
denials are put forth by those interested in propa- 
gating the assumptions of higher criticism, that 
the propaganda is working spiritual death in Pro- 
testant Christendom. Loss of converting power 
and the failure to maintain a high type of Chris- 
tian life in churches is excused or explained by 
changed conditions and the new emphasis upon 
the "social mission of the Church ;" as if the 
Church had any mission apart from the salvation 
of men from their sins and their sanctification to 
the welfare of others ! Sociology would be a poor 

145 



146 Must the Bible Go 

substitute for salvation and if the Church forfeits 
her spiritual power by leaving the main track for 
the sociological switch, what is there to distin- 
guish her from a mere humanitarian society, oc- 
cupied with the superficial aspects of life? It is 
well to pass helpful laws and to seek to better 
the environment of people, but unless deep, under- 
lying causes are reached and the hearts of men 
are turned to God, old effects will reappear and 
the social problem remain to perplex alike Church 
and State. Social service must be the handmaid 
of the people's religion and not their religion 
itself. But the deplorable effect of stressing the 
social idea to the neglect of the deep spiritual 
necessities of men, is to create a false conception 
of the Gospel and to put the Church out of com- 
mission as a divine, soul-saving institution. And 
this insistence of the exponents of higher criti- 
cism upon the call of the Church to engage in 
social service, is but a veiled apology for the loss 
of supernatural, converting power in the Church 
and a virtual confession that the Holy Spirit will 
not honor their radical views concerning the Holy 
Scriptures. 



Must the Bible Go 147 

The truth is, the only call which the Church 
has is to evangelize the world ; to get men saved 
from sin and filled with the Spirit of God ; for this 
involves and assures the exemplification of the 
Christ-life in devotement to human welfare. That 
the Church is not fully realizing this call is ap- 
parent from the decline of church membership 
that is reported in various places as well as from 
the decrease of vital piety among church mem- 
bers. The latest religious statistics from Eng- 
land show that the Baptist and Congregational 
churches have had a year of decline and that their 
membership and the children of their Sunday 
Schools are less by many thousands than a year 
ago. A similar condition exists in other Prot- 
estant bodies. Even worse is the situation re- 
ported from Germany, whence higher criticism 
has spread over the world. A German corre- 
spondent writes to the Christian World as fol- 
lows: 

"The number of university students attending 
divinity classes continues to dwindle rapidly. In 
several universities the number is less than half 
what it was twenty years ago, and in all the Prot- 
estant universities the shrinkage is so manifest 



148 Must the Bible Go 

as to cause grave fears for the immediate future. 
The other day a South German journal declared 
that should this shrinkage continue at the same 
rate for another five years there will not be a 
solitary theological student left in any Protestant 
university in Germany. There are entire districts 
already where it is found next to impossible to 
find young men for ordination. Despite all our 
advance ,in art and in the so-called graces of civil- 
ization, our family life is becoming more raw 
and immature. The old affections which once 
characterized our race are rapidly disappearing, 
and instead we have parents who have no con- 
ception of their duty as moral guides, and chil- 
dren who resent all discipline, all parental control 
and who are taught by example to be self- 
indulgent and to follow pleasure and gain as the 
aim and object of life. Our homes, as moral and 
religious training centres, are disappearing." 

This is the inevitable result of such treatment 
as the Bible has received at the hands of the 
critics. Low ethical views and loose conduct 
prevail when false theories concerning the Holy 
Scriptures spread from Church schools among 
the people. The fear of the Lord disappears with 



Must the Bible Go 149 

reverence for His Word and the operation of the 
Holy Spirit ceases when the product of His in- 
spiration is reduced to the level of mere human 
literature. Professor W. H. Griffith Thomas says 
that the well-known English writer, now Sir W. 
Robertson Nicoll, was walking with Wellhausen 
in the streets of Greifswald, and ventured to ask 
him whether, if his views were accepted, the Bible 
could retain its place in the estimation of the 
common people. "I cannot see how that is pos- 
sible," was the sad reply. 

Dr. Samuel J. Andrews says: "No building 
can long stand when the foundation is under- 
mined ; the first rude shock makes it fall. Many, 
indeed, may continue to profess great reverence 
for the Scriptures, as did the Jews of the Lord's 
day, and study them much, simply because they 
interpret in the spirit of the time, and find in them 
what they wish to find. And we have reason to 
believe that there are many who, like Mr. M. 
Arnold, sing the praises of the Bible long after 
it has ceased to have for them any authority, or 
any theological value." — Christianity and Anti- 
Christianity in Their Final Conflict. 



150 Must the Bible Go 

Hence, the barrenness of a ministry pitched to 
that note. "The Word of God is quick and pow- 
erful and sharper than any two-edged sword," 
but if something be substituted for it, there will 
be no conviction of sin and no real conversions. 
A paper on "Present Phases of Evangelism/' was 
read by an orthodox minister before a Ministerial 
Association. In the discussion that followed, a 
prominent pastor said, in substance: 

"In the theological seminary I espoused the 
higher criticism, and came out an ardent advocate 
of the New Theology. My ministry was barren ; 
no souls were saved, and I found my church dying 
by inches on my hands. I discovered what the 
matter was: it was in my own preaching. The 
New Theology, for edifying and saving results, 
is not preachable. I confess to you that I have 
abandoned it and have gone back to the old- 
fashioned, conservative theology, and God is now 
blessing my ministry." 

His was not the only testimony reported of that 
sort. 

The evil has invaded mission lands and the 
Church that should be "terrible as an army with 
banners," as she confronts the heathen world, 



Must the Bible Go 151 

finds herself discounted by the negations of 
higher criticism. A Moslem paper, the Review 
of Religions, said: "Thus has the Bible been 
swept away as a straw before the mighty current 
of modern criticism, and such was the fate it de- 
served. It is not the unmixed Word of God, it is 
not unerring. Such is the modern Christian 
faith, and we are glad to see that even the Chris- 
tian missionaries have recognized the truth of 
those views." 

Another Moslem, well acquainted with Euro- 
pean thought, is represented by Professor Hart- 
man, a German Statesman, long a resident in 
Mohammedan lands, as saying: 

"Why should there be disseminated among us 
religious documents the genuineness of which is 
in part contested, the meaning of which is in very 
many instances uncertain, and which in general 
Church use are treated as purely human produc- 
tions that, even as far as Christian countries are 
concerned, have merely the value of a historically 
evolved fact?" 

A letter written by two Japanese Christians of 
many years standing, to a magazine in that 



152 Must the Bible Go 

country, contains the following confession of the 
ripe fruit of higher criticism: 

"A generation ago we were taught by the early 
missionaries to believe the Bible to be verbally 
inspired from Genesis to Revelation ; we now hold 
it to be full of errors. We reject the greater part 
of Paul's teaching ; we no longer believe in Virgin 
Birth or Everlasting Punishment for unbelievers, 
nor that ,God can forgive sins only through the 
mediation and suffering of Christ : — this, a mere 
Paulinism, is no longer tenable. Many who, 30 
or 40 years ago, became Christians, have ceased 
to be Christians for these reasons, and there are 
more who have left the Church than now belong 
to it." 

A missionary in Japan writes : 

"My own observation is that the Catechist who 
accepts the results of higher criticism is of no use 
as an evangelist. He is sure of nothing, and only 
feebly exhorts people to get better and be better ; 
he makes no converts. Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo 
are the most deeply affected of any part of Japan 
by the higher criticism." 

A desire to restate Christianity was evinced by 
the Japanese clergy and catechists at Kiuskiu in a 



Must the Bible Go 153 

letter to the C M. S. Missionary Conference 
there in 1907. The letter said: 

"Up-to-date learning shows us that Evolution 
was the mode of origin of things, not Creation, 
and that the Bible is scientifically wrong and full 
of error. It added that Genesis was a myth, writ- 
ten long after the events occurred ; the New Tes- 
tament facts were discredited, miracles a mistake, 
and there was no real basis for many doctrines 
taught by the Church." 

The C. M. S. Missionary Conference, held in 
Lower Bengal in 1906, reported that higher 
critical views had "begun to trouble the minds of 
Indian Christians. Among non-Christians also 
the advance of the Kingdom of Christ is likely 
to receive a serious shock if a suggestion comes 
with any authority from a Christian source that 
our Sacred Records are not true." 

These examples could be augmented. The poi- 
son has been carried into every land. The native 
mind is quick to turn the assumptions of modern 
criticism against the missionary who stands by 
the Supernatural Book and the missionary who 
accepts the assumptions betrays his trust and con- 
firms the heathen distrust of the Bible. Such is 



154 Must the Bible Go 

the heavy handicap with which the Great Com- 
mission to evangelize the nations has been loaded 
by pretended Christian teachers of western lands. 
As stated by the late George Ensor, the first 
C. M. S. missionary to Japan : 

"Christian people will never put themselves 
long about to preach and teach out of a discredited 
Bible. If the Bible be untrustworthy, we will 
not exert ourselves to send it to the Confucianist 
or to the Mohammedan. Both will logically 
affirm that, if our Bible be untrue, they don't care 
to exchange theirs for ours. If our teachings be 
subject to a Bible test for its truth, and the test 
itself has proved unreliable, we find ourselves be- 
fore the Confucianist and the Mohammedan in 
the most illogical, the most hopeless and the most 
helpless plight. ,, 

Well says the Rev. Dr. W. St. Clair Tisdall, 
from whose article on "The Bearing of the De- 
structive Criticism of the Bible on Missionary 
Work," these citations are made: "We cannot 
expect true Christians — the only people who ever 
have supported Christian missionary work — to 
deny themselves in order to give money to propa- 
gate ideas which are contrary to the teachings 



Must the Bible Go 155 

of the Bible, and are dishonoring to the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and are ineffective for men's salva- 
tion." 

Whether at home or abroad higher criticism 
is the foe to evangelism, the paralysis of Chris- 
tian faith, and the damnation of lost men. "Every 
plant," said our Lord, "which My heavenly 
Father hath not planted shall be rooted up." We 
know, therefore, the doom that awaits this 
strange plant transplanted by the enemies of 
revelation into the visible Church and now as- 
siduously cultivated by men who wear the livery 
of orthodoxy while they scatter its poisonous 
fruit. 



156 Must the Bible Go 



"There is a most shallow view, constantly pro- 
pounded now-a-days, when people say that they 
would rather listen to what Christ says in the 
Gospels than to what is written in the Epistles of 
the Apostles. The Holy Ghost alone could bring 
to the remembrance of the Apostles all things 
that Christ had spoken; . . . Christ told 
them everything in germ, although in Jerusalem, 
and afterwards all was more fully revealed.' ' 

"When Jesus appeared to him, then Saul of 
Tarsus not merely saw Jesus, but he saw also 
Moses. He understood then what was the real 
glory of Moses — to lead us to the Saviour. . . . 
It was the sign of a sincere Israelite who loved 
the law of Moses, that being convinced of his 
guilt and of the weakness of the flesh, he longed 
after the Messiah, and after the promise of the 
Father, the Holy Ghost; and it is a sign of our 
sincerity, who profess to have received Jesus and 
the Holy Ghost, that we delight ourselves in the 
law, and that the righteousness of the law is ful- 
filled in us who walk not after the flesh but after 
the Spirit." — Adolph Saphir, The Divine Unity 
of Scripture, pp. 113, 303. 



CHAPTER XI 
"BACK TO CHRIST" 

Nothing is easier than to repeat some senti- 
ment whose form of expression has come to be 
regarded as a criterion of truth, and yet nothing 
may more completely befog the truth and blind 
men to the reality it is intended to disclose. The 
most striking watchword may become the super- 
ficial cry of those who seek to escape the responsi- 
bility imposed by unwelcome truth. Sometimes, 
as in the instance of the new theological demand, 
"back to Christ," the wish to maintain opinions 
or justify actions in conflict with apostolic inter- 
pretation of Christianity, gives birth to the cry. 

It would be well for those who assume this posi- 
tion to reflect on the logical bearing of the posi- 
tion on the authority of Christ. He declared, 
"Heaven and earth shall pass away but my word 
shall not pass away." "Back to Christ," there- 
fore, involves the obligation to abide by whatever 
He said concerning Himself, the accuracy of the 
Scriptures, and the inspiration of the Apostles. 

157 



158 Must the Bible Go 

What he affirmed in regard to the authorship of 
certain writings, must be received by all who 
repair to Him for counsel, the modern scholar to 
the contrary notwithstanding. When, to give 
another example, he proclaims that his Second 
coming is literal and personal, the critic who says 
"back to Christ" and then proceeds to reduce this 
proclamation to a figure of speech and to spir- 
itualize everything, or to deny that He has said 
it, evidences his lack of consistency or his aver- 
sion to the truth. 

Once more: When Christ taught that the 
Apostles as His witnesses would be exempt from 
error by the Spirit of truth, we are bound to ac- 
cept their interpretation of His teaching and their 
exposition of the principles of His religion. He 
declared that they should be "guided into all 
truth." Therefore, the Epistles are as much in- 
spired as the Gospels, and the theology of Paul 
is the theology of Christ. The going away of 
Christ was for the instalment of the apostles in 
His place to give the Church and the world an 
inspired and authoritative explanation of the 
principles He taught and died to establish. He 
declared the moral necessity for this in such state- 



Must the Bible Go 159 

ments as these: "It is expedient for you that I 
go away; for if I not go away, the Comforter 
will not come unto you/' "I have yet many 
things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is 
come, He, shall guide you into all truth ; for He 
shall not speak from Himself, but what things 
soever He shall hear, these shall He speak, and 
He shall declare unto you the things that are to 
come. He shall glorify me ; for He shall take of 
mine and shall declare it unto you." He spoke 
of the purpose of His advent into the world and 
of His death. His Apostles have given the true 
meaning of that death. Hence, while the Gospels 
contain the facts of His life and death, the Epis- 
tles give us the divine explanation of those facts. 
He enunciated principles ; they explained and ap- 
plied those principles. To talk of accepting the 
teaching of Christ, while rejecting that of the 
Apostles is as though one said I believe in the 
principles of Christianity but not in their mean- 
ing. This is not to get back to Christ ; it is to get 
away from Him. 

The chief point of attack is the Pauline the- 
ology, especially the doctrines of sin and atone- 



160 Must the Bible Go 

ment. The cry of "Back to Christ" is merely the 
method of evincing hostility to those doctrines 
and the revolt of natural heart against God. It 
is one with rejecting the deity of Christ. 

These fundamentals stand or fall together, and 
since it was given to Paul to make this fact clear, 
he is the object of bitterest critical assault. 

As to the result of such ill-balanced study of 
the New Testament, I cannot do better than quote 
the words of Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall regard- 
ing the insistence upon the first three Gospels 
alone rather than including the Epistles as well, 
and dwelling upon the historical Christ to the 
exclusion of the Redeemer. He says: 

"The effects of this are already appearing in 
the impoverished religious values of the sermons 
produced by the younger generation of preachers, 
and the deplorable decline of spiritual life and 
knowledge in many churches. Results open to 
observation show that the movement to simplify 
the Christian essence by discarding the theology 
of St. Paul easily carries the teaching of the 
Christian pulpit to a position where, for those 
who submit to that teaching, the characteristic 
experiences of the Christian life become practi- 



Must the Bible Go 161 

cally impossible. The Christian sense of sin; 
Christian penitence at the foot of the cross ; Chris- 
tian faith in an atoning Saviour ; Christian peace 
with God through the mediation of Jesus Christ ; 
— these and other experiences, which were the 
very life of apostles and of apostolic souls, fade 
from the view of the ministry, have no meaning 
for the younger generation." 

To this forcible statement I should like to add 
the language of Dr. J. H. Jowett, discussing 
Paul's conception of the Lord Jesus Christ : 

"My brethren, the Jesus of the new theology 
is a Jesus I can admire, is a Jesus I can respect; 
a Jesus in whose presence I can take off my hat. 
But He is not a Jesus before whom I can go on 
my knees and worship. The Jesus of the new 
theology is the last link of that chain, and not 
the first. He is empty and impoverished of divin- 
ity, and I cannot kneel in His presence and say, 
'My Lord and My God/ " 



162 Must the Bible Go 

"So far as I can see the arguments used in the 
one field, of the critical treatment of the Old 
Testament may be employed equally well in the 
other (the New Testament), and the Gospel his- 
tory be critically reconstructed out of the tenden- 
cies and views of the second century, just as the 
account of the pre-prophetic religion given by the 
Hebrew writers is made the result of the projec- 
tion backward of later ideas." — Prof. James Rob- 
ertson, Early Religion of Israel 

"It does not appear possible to account for the 
rise and course of apostolic Christianity except 
by the recognition of the supernatural facts and 
forces to which the books themselves testify. 
The frank acknowledgment of the supernatural, 
together with the perception of the no less truly 
genetic way in which the original faith in Jesus 
as Messiah was unfolded and extended, would 
seem to be required of the historian who wishes 
to be faithful to his sources of information and 
to present apostolic Christianity as it was." — Dr. 
Purves. 

'The great bulk of the opposition to the virgin 
birth comes from those who do not recognize a 
supernatural element in Christ's life at all."— 
Professor Qrr. 



CHAPTER XII 

DARKENING COUNSEL BY WORDS 
WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE 

"Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words 
without knowledge ?" Lyman Abbott, editor of 
the Outlook, whose theological vagaries and fal- 
lacious reasoning concerning the Scriptures make 
it unwise and unsafe to commend his publication. 
An example of Dr. Abbott's shallow unbelief is 
the editorial on the action of the New York Pres- 
bytery in licensing to preach four young men who 
admitted they could not credit "the Virgin Birth 
of Jesus Christ." 

Referring to that action, the Outlook says 
(italic type ours) : "We hope that this may be 
taken to indicate a tendency in the Church not to 
attach a greater importance to the doctrine of the 
Virgin Birth than the Bible attaches to it/' It 
indicates a tendency, no doubt; signs of it are 
appearing here and there; but to speak of "not 
attaching greater importance to the doctrine of 
the Virgin Birth than the Bible attaches to it," 

163 



164 Must the Bible Go 

is a covert assault on the integrity of the Scrip- 
ture narratives as is evident by a further refer- 
ence to the Virgin Birth as "a disputed event in 
remote history." 

Here, then, is the animus of the Outlook's edi- 
torial — a denial that the record of this event is 
trustworthy, though two of the Gospels contain 
it and there is no more reason to doubt it than 
other things which the Gospels set forth as the 
evidences and credentials of the unique character 
and claims of Jesus Christ. The mystery of this 
incarnate personality is an offence to the carnal 
reason and must be got rid of by attacking the 
trustworthiness of Bible history. And this is the 
process by which higher criticism has unitari- 
anized the Scriptures and given us, instead of 
deity incarnate, a sort of "divinity" that is "com- 
mon to all men." Well may it be said, "They have 
taken away my Lord." 

The Outlook continues: "To license a theo- 
logical student is to declare that he is fitted to be 
a preacher of the Gospel. It is certain that a man 
may be fitted to be a preacher of the Gospel who 
never refers in his sermons to the Virgin Birth. 
The Apostles were great preachers and they 



Must the Bible Go 165 

never referred to the Virgin Birth. Jesus Christ 
is the ideal preacher of Christian history, and He 
never referred to the Virgin Birth. We wonder 
how many who read this article ever heard any 
preacher refer in his sermons to the Virgin Birth. 

"It is clearly not necessary to preach on the 
Virgin Birth in order to preach effectively." 

As a specimen of irrelevant and superficial rea- 
soning we do not remember ever to have seen this 
equaled. Christ and His apostles never referred 
in their preaching to the Virgin Birth ; therefore 
a man who denies this event may be fit to preach 
the Gospel ! No ! If Christ never referred to this 
mystery, the reverent mind would accept the 
omission as one of those silences for which no 
explanation was vouchsafed. We may, however, 
affirm that He would not speak of it to His ene- 
mies, who would only mock at such a revelation. 
See for reason Matt. 7:6. Holy mysteries were 
not for unbelievers. May not this also answer 
the question why did not the apostles speak of it 
in their preaching, if indeed they never did so? 
"I have many things to say unto you," said Jesus, 
even to His disciples, before the Spirit came, "but 
ye cannot bear them now." The Pharisees re- 



166 Must the Bible Go 

jected His claim to equality, with God, because 
they believed him to be the natural son of Joseph. 
Compare Matthew 13:54-55 with John 5:17-18 
and John 10:33. He, however, never disavowed 
the understanding they had of His statements 
concerning His relation to the infinite Father, but 
went on to vindicate His claim to equal honors 
with God. The Gospel of John was written for 
the Church to confirm faith in the Deity of Christ. 
So clear is this that critics have tried hard to dis- 
credit its historical character. But it stands an 
irrefutable witness to the Godhead of Christ. 

How does Dr. Abbott know that the apostles 
never referred to this doctrine in their preaching, 
seeing he lives nineteen hundred years after 
them? Their writings prove that they believed 
and taught it. No other interpretation can be 
put upon John's declaration that the eternal Word 
became flesh and tabernacled among men, and 
upon his polemic against the Gnostics who denied 
the incarnation of Deity in Jesus Christ. See 1 
John 1:1-2, 4:1-3 and 5:20; also 2 John 9-1 1; 
which must be considered with the Gospel of 
John. So with the Pauline writings which con- 
tain allusions to the Virgin Birth, since by this 



Must the Bible Go 167 

happening alone can content be put into his doc- 
trine of the incarnation. Rom. 9:5; Phil. 2:5-8; 
1 Tim. 3:16; Titus 2:10, 13. 

"As regards the writings of St. Paul, ,, says 
Prof. Henry Cowan of Aberdeen, Scotland, "if 
his silence as to the virgin birth be an argument 
against the credibility, we must reject all the rec- 
ords of Christ healing disease; for not one cure 
is referred to in any Pauline letter. The nature 
of St. Paul's epistles did not demand any express 
reference to the Virgin Birth. His teaching is 
based mainly on our Lord's death and resurrec- 
tion. Still, as in the case of St. John, there is a 
latent hint of a superhuman entrance into the 
world/' 

And Dr. Weiss, the famous Berlin professor, 
holds that a new creative act of God, a cancelling 
of the natural continuity is "an almost indis- 
pensable consequence of St. Paul's theology." — 
(Bibl. Theologie des N. T.) 

The writings of the Apostles imply a strong 
probability that in their oral ministry they re- 
ferred to the mystery of the incarnation. But if 
they did not do so, their writings prove their faith 
in the mystery and it is faith that makes the true 



168 Must the Bible Go 

preacher. Big preachers may deny the atone- 
ment as some do, but they are not "effective 
preachers." The effective preacher is he who 
preaches the Gospel "with the Holy Ghost sent 
down from heaven" and the Holy Ghost will 
never attend a ministry that doubts or denies a 
doctrine and a fact plainly revealed in the Scrip- 
tures and vital to the atonement. It is wide of 
the mark to say, it is not necessary to preach on 
the Virgin Birth to preach effectively. It is the 
want of faith in this truth that evinces unfitness 
to preach and precludes the manifestation of the 
Holy Spirit who alone is the guarantee of spir- 
itual results. Moreover, so long as reverent faith 
exists in this doctrine, there is no need to refer to 
it specifically, if the atonement made possible by 
the fact be faithfully preached. But let it be 
called in question and men of faith will emphasize 
it, as did the apostles when it was attacked by the 
Gnostics. 

Again : "A recent writer has pointed out the 
undoubted fact that the Virgin Birth is not the 
cause of Christ's divinity. It is only an evidence 
for His divinity. One may believe in the divinity 
and not believe in that special evidence. 



Must the Bible Go 169 

"The divinity of Christ is a spiritual truth. It 
does not depend upon a physiological fact." 

These are astonishing statements and reveal a 
pitiable blindness to the merits of the case. If 
Dr. Abbott means by "divinity" something more 
than a divine humanity, which the new theology 
affirms of all men, the physiological fact is essen- 
tial to its manifestation in the world and its avail- 
ability for the redemption of the world. How is 
it possible to believe in the divinity (Deity) of 
Christ as portrayed in the New Testament and 
reject the very means by which that Deity became 
a manifested fact on earth? "One may believe 
in the divinity and not believe in that special evi- 
dence" !! This is nonsense, if it refer to the 
Christ that "came into the world to save sinners." 
We recognize no other Divinity than that which 
was corporealized and dwelt among men, who 
"beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begot- 
ten of the Father, full of grace and truth." 

Finally: "Jesus Christ has Himself pointed 
out the twofold evidence on which He would have 
His Church base its faith in His divinity: 'Be- 
lieve me that I am in the Father and the Father 



170 Must the Bible Go 

in me; or else believe me for the very work's 
sake/ 

"The first evidence for his divinity is his char- 
acter. 

"The second evidence is the history of Chris- 
tianity — that is, the history of what has been his 
influence on the life of the world. 

"Whenever the Church substitutes for this two- 
fold argument, based on a disputed event in re- 
mote history, it weakens the faith it wishes to 
establish. ,, 

We can only add to what has already been said 
that the twofold evidence adduced implies and 
necessitates the Virgin Birth. No such character 
and no such influence is possible on the natural 
generation theory. 

Says Professor Orr: "Can we, in the estab- 
lishing of such a new creative beginning — in the 
origination of One who, while holding of human- 
ity is yet outside the chain of its heredities and 
liabilities — think of a spiritual miracle which has 
not also its physical side? I contend that we 
cannot. ... In no case in the world's his- 
tory has natural generation issued in a being who 
is sinless, not to say superhuman. But here in 



Must the Bible Go 171 

Jesus is One who, as we have seen, is not only 
sinless and archetypal, but has in Him all the 
potencies of Godhead. Is it not reasonable to ex- 
pect that His manner of entering the world will 
be also different from that of others?" — (The 
[Virgin Birth of Christ.) 

As the offspring of sinful man, Jesus would 
have been nothing more than a human teacher 
with the frailties and imperfections of other men. 
The world would still be despairing of a Deliv- 
erer. The only attempt to evade this reasoning 
is by denying that man is a fallen being and, in 
accordance with a universal law, produces after 
his kind. Of course this sweeps away the entire 
doctrinal system of the New Testament, whose 
teaching concerning sin, incarnation and redemp- 
tion is a consistent whole. The denial of one 
point carries with it all, including the integrity of 
the record containing the "disputed event" which 
Lyman Abbott thinks is an element of weakness 
in the argument for Christ's divinity. But if the 
record cannot be relied upon, there is nothing to 
argue about. We have no more ground to dis- 
pute the Virgin Birth than we have to dispute 
the miraculous character and influence that de- 



172 Must the Bible Go 

pend upon it — than we have to question other 
conceded facts that appear in the same narratives. 
To do so is to put the Scriptures out of court as 
a competent witness to anything. The extraordi- 
nary nature of an event does not vitiate the narra- 
tive. If Matthew and Luke are unreliable in this 
respect, they cannot be trusted to furnish us a 
truthful account at all. Thus every man who 
goes by his own judgment as to what is or is not 
credible makes his own Bible and we have no 
authoritative revelation from God. 

John Stuart Blackie, in his Homer and The 
Iliad (referring to Wolf's theory concerning the 
writings of Homer which is identical with the 
critical theory concerning the Old Testament) 
says : i We who stand on the received text have 
the tradition of long centuries in our favor, and 
not one substantial reason against us. Posses- 
sion in literary as in civil affairs is nine points of 
the law; and he who wishes to shake an old re- 
ceived document out of its consistency, must be 
prepared to bring something more weighty to 
bear against it than clever guesses and well- 
devised possibilities." 

Divine inspiration guaranteed the accuracy 
of the record of events essential to an under- 



Must the Bible Go 173 

standing of the truth. These writers got their in- 
formation first-hand. Luke's reason for writ- 
ing his Gospel makes the editor of the Outlook 
an object of pity. "Forasmuch/' he begins, 
"as many have taken in hand to draw up a 
narrative, concerning those matters which have 
been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered 
them unto us which from the beginning were eye 
witnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed 
good to me also, having traced the course of all 
things accurately from the first, to write unto thee 
in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou 
mightest know the certainty concerning the 
things wherein thou wast instructed," Among 
the things which were a matter of instruction 
and narrated by Luke as a certainty, was the Vir- 
gin Birth. Dr. Abbott terms it "a disputed 
event." We stand by Luke. 

Now how came Luke into possession of the 
facts? Sir William M. Ramsay thinks they 
"came ultimately to Luke's knowledge in some 
way which he does not explain precisely; but he 
suggests in his own fashion that Mary was ulti- 
mately his authority. He knew what was kept 
hid in her heart;" and that "the knowledge came 



174 Must the Bible Go 

to him from her either directly or through a trust- 
worthy intermediary/' 

This is likewise the opinion of Prof. William 
Sanday (Oxford), who says : "It is not too much 
to say that the whole story is told from the point 
of view of a woman, and more particularly of 
Mary. Impressions of this kind cannot perhaps 
be insisted upon ; but for myself I believe that the 
last link- in the chain by which the substance of 
the chapters reached St. Luke — and I should not 
be surprised if the first link too — was a woman." 

Prof. Theod. Zahn, D. D., Erlangen, Germany, 
whose confession is: "My faith in Jesus as my 
Redeemer stands and falls with the grateful rec- 
ognition of the facts which form the contents of 
the Gosper," affirms that John has "not only indi- 
rectly shown his familiarity with the Virgin 
Birth of Jesus and omitted any opposition to it, 
but he has confessed it with full sounding testi- 
mony. If the Fourth Evangelist is the disciple 
who, in compliance with the last will of the dying 
Jesus, took Mary into his house, we cannot imag- 
ine any stronger testimony than this; for, what 
men can know of the birth of Jesus, that was 
known to the mother who has borne our Lord." 



Must the Bible Go 175 

Note: Prof. James Orr sums up his argu- 
ments in the able work already mentioned, in the 
following propositions : 

"i. The only two narratives we have of the 
birth of Jesus tell us that He was born of a 
Virgin. 

2. The Gospels containing these narratives 
are genuine documents of the Apostolic Age. 

3. The texts of these narratives have come 
down to us in their integrity. 

4. The two narratives of the Virgin Birth are 
independent, 

5. The narratives, nevertheless, are not con- 
tradictory, but are complementary and corrobora- 
tive of each other. 

6. There are strongest reasons for believing 
that Matthew's narrative comes from the circle 
of Joseph, and Luke's from the circle of Mary. 

7. The Gospel of Mark, which embraces only 
the public ministry of Jesus, does not contradict 
the other narratives. 



176 Must the Bible Go 

8. The Gospel of John does not contradict the 
other narratives, but presupposes them. 

9. John unquestionably knew the earlier Gos- 
pels, and is traditionally identified with opposition 
to the earliest known impugner of the Virgin 
Birth, Cerinthus. 

10. Paul does not contradict the Virgin birth. 
On the contrary, Luke, a chief witness of the 
Virgin Birth, was the companion of Paul, and 
Paul's language seems to presuppose some knowl- 
edge of the fact. 

11. The doctrine of Paul and John — as of the 
New Testament generally — implies a miracle in 
the origin of Christ. 

12. The Gospels containing the narratives of 
Christ's birth were, so far as known, received 
without question by the Church from their first 
appearance. 

13. With the exceptions of the Ebionites — the 
narrowest section of the Jewish Christians — and 
some of the Gnostic sects, the Church from Apos- 
tolic times universally accepted the fact of the 



Must the Bible Go 177 

Virgin Birth. The Nazarenes, or main body of 
the Jewish Christians, accepted it. 

14. The early Church set high value on the 
Virgin Birth doctrinally, as attesting (1) the 
true humanity of Christ, and (2) His super- 
human dignity. 

15. The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 is rightly 
applied by Matthew to the birth of Jesus. 

16. Yet, as most critics now admit, this proph- 
ecy was applied by no one in those days to the 
Messiah, and therefore could not have suggested 
the invention of this story. 

17. It is granted by a majority of recent 
critics that the myth — as they call it — of the Vir- 
gin Birth could not have originated on Jewish 
soil. 

18. It is conclusively shown by Harnack and 
others that it could not have originated on Gen- 
tile soil. 

19. Pagan myths do not afford any proper 
analogies to the Virgin Birth of Christ, or the 
doctrine of the Incarnation. 



178 Must the Bible Go 

20. The perfect sinlessness of Christ, and the 
archetypal character of His humanity, imply a 
miracle in His origin. 

21. The doctrine of the Incarnation of the 
pre-existent Son implies a miracle in Christ's 
origin. 

22. The miracle in Christ's origin had of 
necessity a physical as well as a spiritual side. 

23. The Virgin Birth answers historically to 
the conditions which faith postulates for the 
origin of Christ. 

In light of these propositions, I cannot ac- 
quiesce in the opinion that the article of the Vir- 
gin Birth is one doctrinally indifferent, or that 
can be legitimately dropped from the public creed 
of the Church. The rejection of this article 
would, in my judgment, be a mutilation of Scrip- 
ture, a contradiction of the continuous testimony 
of the Church from Apostolic times, a weakening 
of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and a practical 
surrender of the Christian position into the 



Must the Bible Go 179 

hands of the advocates of a non-miraculous, 
purely humanitarian Christ — all on insufficient 
grounds," 



180 Must the Bible Go 



"In proportion as unbelief in the Scriptures in- 
creases, the Person of the Incarnate Son, who, 
as the First and the Last, the Beginning and the 
End, alone gives it Unity, unity and meaning, 
recedes from our sight ; and as He recedes, dark- 
ness deepens over both present and future. For 
years the most unobservant has seen how within 
the Church the study of prophecy has been 
greatly disparaged — a sure sign of that decay of 
faith which, beginning here, extends itself to his- 
tory and doctrine, and ends in their final rejec- 
tion." — Samuel J. Andrews, Christianity and 
Anti-Christianity in Their Final Conflict 

"The connection is so close that few who earn- 
estly believe in the absolute worth of Christ's 
Person will be disposed to deny the truth of the 
Evangelical narratives relating to the manner of 
His entrance into, and exit from, the world." — 
Prof. A. B. Bruce, Miraculous Elements in The 
Gospels. 



CHAPTER XIII 
A DISPARAGED CHRIST: HIS PERSON 

A gentleman once purchased a map of the U. S. 
in the form of blocks and having taken it home, 
gave the blocks to his children to put together. 
None of them succeeded until it was discovered 
there was a man in the map. When the figure of 
the man was made, the map was perfect. Such 
is the map of Revelation, known as the Bible. 
Though consisting of many parts, it is yet a com- 
plete whole. The key to its construction is the 
heavenly Man called by Himself the Son of Man, 
by His ablest Apostle "the Lord from heaven." 
Any attempt to reconstruct this celestial map 
without respect to Him must result in confusion. 
He is its principle of unity, its secret of power. 

Many with no spiritual insight have taken it to 
pieces and subjected each piece to a microscopic 
examination, but since they did not see the Super- 
natural Man, their effort to put the parts together 
has met with no better success than the colored 
181 



182 Must the Bible Go 

deacon said his preacher attained: "He's de bes' 
in de world to take de Bible apart, but he don* 
know how to put it togeder again." 

The higher critics and all others who handle 
the Word of God in a cold, unsympathetic spirit 
are colossal bunglers. When they are through 
with it, there is nothing but meaningless patch- 
work. They are not scientific; for true science 
does not manufacture facts but discovers them. 
These men are not looking for facts but for con- 
firmation to a preconceived theory. Besides, facts 
are nothing to a man without eyes. As Chester- 
ton says: "The higher critic finds, like Peeping 
Tom, that it is no good to have bored the hole 
when you have lost the eye." We cannot accept 
the word of blind men touching the facts of in- 
spiration, and we are not shut up to their specula- 
tions for knowledge of the truth. The question 
of a Revelation is not left to them. This is a ques- 
tion which can be settled only by those who hold 
the key to the Scriptures. And the key is not 
furnished by any advocate of a false doctrine of 
Christ. 

It is not going too far to say the Bible is inex- 
plicable except upon a true Christology. Every 



Must the Bible Go 183 

phase of Biblical teaching responds to the true 
view of Christ and takes its place in a har- 
monious, rational system of Christian thought. 
Any doctrine, cult, or criticism that does not ac- 
cord Him the honor which the Scriptures demand, 
is an infinite disparagement of His claims and a 
denial of humanity's hope. A disparaged Christ 
means a fallible book, an unredeemed world, and 
a hopeless eternity. As Sir Robert Anderson, the 
learned lawyer of London, England, says, in his 
"remarkable book," The Bible and Modern Crit- 
icism: "It is not the Bible that is at stake but the 
Christ of the Bible." Therefore, when the Bible 
as inspired and authoritative goes out of the faith 
of the Church, Christ as "the Power of God and 
the Wisdom of God" goes with it. It is a vain 
imagination to think, under these circumstances, 
that the value of the Bible is enhanced and the 
dignity of Christ is maintained. We believe with 
the able author just quoted that "The foundation 
truth of Christianity is that the Man of Calvary 
is now sitting upon the throne of God," and we 
justify his statement, in his appeal to all fair 
minds, "that those who believe this upon no better 
authority than the higher critics' Bible are credu- 



184 Must the Bible Go 

lous and superstitious. We can reach the Living 
Word only through the written word. There- 
fore in contending for a really inspired — an abso- 
lutely authoritative — Bible, we can say with 
Athanasius, 'We are fighting for our all.' " 

Now, in four principal ways the Christ of the 
Bible is disparaged, the prevalence of which 
would be the tragedy of the world : 

i. When His person is compromised, as by 
Gnosticism and Arianism in the Ancient Church, 
and by Socinianism or Unitarianism in the mod- 
ern Church. 

2. When His atonement is denied, as by 
theories which reject the expiatory character of 
His death and make salvation to consist in the 
following of an example. 

3. When His power is limited, as by teaching 
that confines faith to the Pardon aspect of Chris- 
tianity and is blind to the supreme purpose of 
Christ's mission to make men holy. 

4. When His authority is disputed, as by 
Criticism that holds He spoke in the language 
of His age and therefore His word is not final 
touching the Holy Scriptures. 



Must the Bible Go 185 

Gnosticism asserting the evil of matter taught 
that Jesus Christ was not the incarnation of God. 
Its leading exponent was contemporary with the 
apostle John who directed his writings against 
this heresy, declaring that whoever denied the 
coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh was anti- 
Christ. A recrudescence of this error has ap- 
peared in Christian Science (so-called), its 
founder affirming the impossibility of Deity be- 
coming corporealized. This cult, however, goes 
beyond Gnosticism which never denied the reality 
of matter. It contains elements of absurdity un- 
known to that ancient heresy. They are alike 
in sweeping away the doctrine of the incarnation 
which the Gospel and Epistles of John explicitly 
teach. 

Arianism exalted Christ to the highest point 
of creature greatness, but left him nevertheless 
a creature. At one time it seemed likely to be- 
come the prevailing form of Christianity, but 
championed by Athanasius, "against the world," 
the truth of our Lord's divine-human personality 
became the creed of the Church. 

Socinianism at first held more honorable views 
of Christ's person than the later forms of this 



186 Must the Bible Go 

heresy. In its present day form of Unitarianism 
and higher criticism it gives us a Christ below 
the capacity of the men who have swept the 
supernatural out of the Bible. Its Kenosis "be- 
tokens not the humiliation of Christ, but His 
degradation. It is not that He became man, but 
that He sank to the level of a Jew of that age. 
Not that while 'knowing that the Father had 
given all things into His hands and that He was 
come from God and was going to God/ He 
humbled Himself; but that knowing nothing 
more than His contemporaries, His mind was 
warped by prejudice and ignorance." 

The disastrous effect of such teaching is in- 
calculable. Already the decline of spirituality 
portends the loss of all that evinces the super- 
natural character of Christianity. It is as Leonce 
de Grandmaison, editor of Etudes, and Re- 
searches de Science Religieuse, Paris, says in an 
able article on the Witness of the Spirit to the 
Deity of Christ. 

"All yielding, every kind of Arianism, every 
attempt to reduce the Person of Christ to a 
subordinate role, eminent, if you will, but after 



Must the Bible Go 187 

all within the human sphere — all yielding of this 
kind has been translated into a spiritual lower- 
ing, into a patent diminution of religious life/* 



188 Must the Bible Go 



"It is common to regard love as the funda- 
mental feature of the divine character; and in 
this way it is very difficult to reach the attribute 
of justice. Most thinkers, indeed, do not reach 
it at all. This one fact should serve to show the 
error in which they are entangled. Holy, holy, 
holy, say the creatures nearest to God, when 
celebrating His perfection (Isa. VI), and not 
good, good, good. Holiness, such is the essence 
of God; and holiness is the absolute love of the 
good, and the absolute horror of evil. ... It 
is obvious that justice is included no less neces- 
sarily than love itself in the fundamental feature 
of the divine character, holiness." — Godet. 

"The wrath which pours out upon Him is not 
meant for Him as the righteous One who volun- 
tarily offers Himself; but indirectly it relates to 
Him, so far as He has vicariously identified Him- 
self with sinners, who are deserving of wrath. 
How could He have made expiation for sin, if He 
had simply subjected Himself to its cosmical 
effects, and not directly subjected Himself to that 
wrath which is the invariable divine correlative 
of human sin?" — Delitzsch. 



CHAPTER XIV 

A DISPARAGED CHRIST: HIS 
ATONEMENT 

The connection of the truth discussed in the 
previous chapter with the nature of the atonement 
is too close to escape the attention of any thinker. 
A denial of our Lord's deity reduces His death 
to the level of martyrdom for an opinion, with 
no high and lasting significance for the race. 
When, after His resurrection, He opened the 
mind of the disciples that they might understand 
the Scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is writ- 
ten that the Christ should suffer and rise again 
from the dead the third day, and that repentance 
and remission of sin should be preached in His 
name, unto all the nations, beginning from 
Jerusalem/' He proclaimed that His death and 
resurrection possessed elements of universality 
and moral deliverance utterly inconsistent with 
the idea of social and political martyrdom, evinc- 
ing the unique, unparalleled character of this 
event. This view is further shown by His 
declaration: "Therefore doth the Father love me 

189 



190 Must the Bible Go 

because / lay down my life, that I may take it 
again. No man taketh it away from me, but I 
lay it down of myself. I have the power (Greek, 
authority) to lay it down, and I have power to 
take it again. This commandment received I 
from my father" (John 10:17-18); a statement 
whose bearing is evident from the incident re- 
corded in John 18:4-8. What made them go 
backward and fall to the ground? Our Lord 
there demonstrated the meaning of His own 
words, "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it 
down of myself." They could not take Him with- 
out His consent, nor would He give this until the 
safety of His chosen was assured. Then with 
the question "The cup which the Father hath 
given me, shall I not drink it?" (identical with 
"this commandment received I from my Father," 
John 10:18), He permitted his enemies to seize 
and bind Him. 

Now, no martyr, in the common acceptation of 
the term, was ever able to say: "No man taketh 
my life from me but I lay it down of myself. I 
have power to lay it down and I have power to take 
it again." For though willing to die, he had no 
power to prevent his death. Because of his help- 



Must the Bible Go 191 

lessness, his life was taken away by men. And 
death thenceforth held dominion over him. The 
fact that this was not so with Jesus invested His 
death with a meaning not possible on the theory 
of a merely human Christ. 

The positive affirmations of Scripture must fix 
that meaning. A few passages will suffice in this 
connection. 

"For this is my blood of the covenant which is 
shed for many unto the remission of sins." 
(Matt. 26:28.) 

"Being justified freely by his grace, through 
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God 
set forth to be a propitiation through faith by his 
blood, to show His righteousness because of the 
passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the 
forbearance of God; for the shewing, I say, of 
His righteousness at this present season; that 
He might Himself be just and the justifier of him 
that hath faith in Jesus." (Rom. 3:23-27.) 

"God was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
Himself, not reckoning unto them their tres- 
passes, . . . Him who knew no sin He made 
to be sin on our behalf that we might become the 



192 Must the Bible Go 

righteousness of God in him." (2 Cor. 5:19-21, 
R. V.) 

"Apart from shedding of blood there is no re- 
mission." (Heb. 9:22.) 

"Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the 
righteous for the unrighteous that He might 
bring us to God." (1 Pet. 3 :i8.) 

"The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth 
us from all sin." (1 John 1 17.) 

"Unto Him that loveth us and loosed us from 
our sins by His blood." (Rev. 1 :5.) 

A true exegesis of these Scriptures can yield 
but one interpretation. The death of Jesus Christ 
was an expiation for sin, not a martyrdom for 
principle. As such it was vicarious, since He had 
no sin to atone for. But the terrible nature of 
His sufferings proved the awful reality of sin 
which had disturbed the moral order of the uni- 
verse, affronted the majesty and holiness of God 
and corrupted and separated the sinning creature 
from the Creator. Yet God would save "rebel- 
lious man." This He could do only by a plan that 
would combine the attributes of mercy and 
justice; that would wipe out infinite wrong and 
at the same time secure the bestowal of infinite 



Must the Bible Go 193 

mercy. Such a plan, in short, to effect man's 
moral recovery, must safeguard the righteous- 
ness of God, for that is the foundation of His 
throne. Superficial thinkers see nothing in this. 
But the introduction of sin by the revolt of moral 
beings meant the profoundest problem in the uni- 
verse. Love alone could not solve it; for love 
apart from righteousness becomes unprincipled. 
Repentance was not the way out; for this could 
neither repair the damage done by wrong nor 
create a love of right. Forgiveness as a sovereign 
act, without some provision for the vindication 
of righteousness and the moral restoration of the 
sinner, would be equivalent to licensing sin. 

"Once we put law and necessity out of the re- 
lations between Christ's death and our sin, we 
dismiss the very possibility of thinking on the 
subject; we may use words about it, but they are 
words without meaning .... The simplest 
hearer feels that there is something irrational in 
saying that the death of Christ is a great proof 
of love to the sinful unless there is shown at the 
same time a rational connection between that 
death and the responsibilities which sin involves 
and from which that death delivers." "For love 



194 Must the Bible Go 

in the Atonement is inseparable from law." 
(Denney.) 

The incarnation and suffering of God in Jesus 
Christ solved the problem. This provided a per- 
fect righteousness by which grace might have a 
free hand to rescue sinful man. Love inspired 
the atonement (John 3:16), but could not save 
without it (Rom. 3 124-26). Infinite wisdom alone 
was equal to the exigency — wisdom pervaded 
with love and girded by power. Thus the cross 
of Christ is "the power of God and the wisdom 
of God." And thus it comes that "grace reigns 
through righteousness unto eternal life through 
Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 5:21.) 

No finite being could have atoned for sin by 
rendering the homage which infinite righteous- 
ness demanded as the ground for the exercise of 
the pardoning prerogative. The sufferings of a 
man though he were a perfect man, might have 
had a finite value and served as an example, but 
they could never have satisfied the infinite factors 
of this problem. The wrath of God against sin 
cannot be dismissed as a fiction of theology. "It 
is usually because we are not angry enough with 
our own sin that we deny the anger of God." (H. 



Must the Bible Go 195 

R. Mackintosh, D. D., New College, Edinburgh.) 
There is in every man whose conscience has not 
been perverted by false teaching a feeling that 
cannot be satisfied by any theory that ignores the 
question of Justice in relation to Sin. The able 
thinker just quoted speaks of "situations, terribly 
and inexorably rear' — situations in which "the 
consciousness of sin is awake and urgent" — 
when "the Christian who has nothing to say 
about vicarious atonement, must acknowledge 
himself baffled, helpless and dumb." In sup- 
port of this statement he refers to a conversa- 
tion which Hugh Falconer had on this subject 
many years ago with the late Professor Pflei- 
derer, of Berlin. "He asked me," says Fal- 
coner, "to give him an actual instance. I men- 
tioned that a few weeks before our talk a 
message came to the Manse begging me to come 
at once to a dying quarryman. The poor fellow 
was absolutely illiterate. He fastened his hungry 
eyes on me. What about God whom he must 
meet in a few hours? I spoke of God's love: in 
vain. I spoke of His Fatherhood : in vain. Love, 
compassion, mercy, Fatherhood were too vague. 
It was like catching at a glittering vapour. Some 



196 Must the Bible Go 

instinct of Justice within him refused to be satis- 
fied. So I said, 'God made us and loves us. But 
we have broken His law and are hopelessly in 
His debt. But He Himself has 'paid our debts/ 
His Christ died for us. There is therefore now 
no condemnation to those who are in Him/ I 
gave a rough illustration as a sort of window into 
a vicarious text. Could not the hungry eyes look 
through Jt and catch a glimpse of God Himself? 
They did see through it. "Our debts were paid." 
He could meet God in Christ his substitute. I 
put it to my friend. Was there not something 
honorable in that poor dying quarryman refusing 
the love till his conscience was satisfied? I can 
never forget Pfleiderer's emotion as he replied in 
effect: If a doctrine really meets a deep human 
need it must be true. ,, (The Heart of the Gospel 
and the Preacher, "The Constructive Quarterly.") 
A Christianity without a Divine Savior — in 
other words, a Christianity without the atone- 
ment and the regenerating Spirit- — is a counter- 
feit, utterly inadequate to renew the soul and 
transform the life. On one occasion, Dr. Parker, 
the eminent London preacher, referring to the 
Unitarian conception of Jesus as a great example 



Must the Bible Go 197 

only, used this illustration: "We have been to 
hear Paderewski play. It was wonderful, superb, 
magnificent. Then we went home and looked at 
the piano. We would have sold it to the first man 
who would have been fool enough to buy it. That 
is the effect of your great example upon me. I 
want not only a great Example, but a great 
Saviour, One who can deliver me from my weak- 
ness and my sin." 

That hits the situation exactly. To say nothing 
of the impossibility of an example, however glo- 
rious, correcting the sinful past, such a theory 
cannot put heart into a man who feels the want of 
enabling power. A high example may bring 
despair to an earnest soul. 

Now it is because "God was in Christ recon- 
ciling the world unto Himself," that His love can 
be trusted. We have not a God who is indifferent 
to sin but who has dealt with it in a manner to 
manifest His righteousness and commend His 
love. According to the Unitarian view there was 
no Divine sufferer, no expiation for sin, no mani- 
festation of a holy and righteous love. This is a 
degradation of the character of God and a lower- 
ing of the Biblical conception of Christ. Is it any 



198 Must the Bible Go 

wonder some pulpits are powerless ? Forsyth has 
touched the secret of this weakness in the follow- 
ing forceful utterance : 'The grace of God can- 
not return to our preachers or to our faith, till we 
recover what has almost clean gone from our gen- 
eral, familiar, and current religion, what liberal- 
ism has quite lost — I mean a due sense of the holi- 
ness of God. This holiness of God is the real 
foundation — it is certainly the ruling interest of 
the Christian religion. Have our Churches lost 
that seal? Are we producing reform, social or 
theological, faster than we are producing faith? 
We are not seeking first the kingdom of God and 
His holiness, but only carrying on with very ex- 
pensive and noisy machinery a 'kingdom-of-God's 
industry/ We are merely running the kingdom, 
and running it without the Cross. We have the 
old trade-mark, but what does that matter in a 
dry and thirsty land where no water is, if the 
artesian well on our premises is growing dry?" 
(The Cruciality of the Cross). 

Nothing but a Gospel that maintains the holi- 
ness and righteousness of God while it magnifies 
His mercy can prevail over the sins of the age, 
and this we have in the vicarious sufferings of the 



Must the Bible Go 199 

Son of God. It was the Godhead of Christ that 
invested His sufferings with infinite value for all 
moral beings and made the riches of Divine grace 
available to sinful men. (Eph. 1 130-10; 2 \J\ 3 :8- 
11). And all theories of the person or of the 
atonement of Christ which deny or pervert this 
truth do unspeakable dishonor to Him. The 
Bishop of London during a visit to this country 
well said in a speech : 

"The Christian religion does not consist in a 
belief in a good man named Jesus Christ dying 
on the Cross, but consists in a belief of the sacri- 
fice of God Himself. The future lies with no 
Church which sinks to what is called the new 
theology. What we must beware of on both sides 
of the Atlantic is losing the power of our message 
by trying to make it easier to believe/' 



200 Must the Bible Go 



"It is a striking illustration of the separation 
between the Head and the Church, that after 
eighteen centuries its scholars are going back to 
the records of His earthly life to find out who He 
was ! If it had continued in the heavenly fellow- 
ship to which He exalted it, it would be able to 
tell the world with one voice both what He was 
and what He is." — Samuel J. Andrews, Chris- 
tianity and Anti-Christianity in their Final Con- 
flict. " 

"The whole work of Christ's redemption — His 
Atonement and Victory, His Exaltation and In- 
tercession, His glory at the right hand of God — 
all these are only preparatory to what is the chief 
triumph of His grace : the renewal of the heart to 
be the temple of God. Through Christ God gives 
the Holy Spirit to glorify Him in the heart, by 
working there all that He has done and is doing 
for the soul. ,, — Andrew Murray, The Two Cove- 
nants, p. 66. 



CHAPTER XV 

A DISPARAGED CHRIST: 
HIS POWER 

Any view of Christian privilege that limits the 
possibility of grace in a believer is a serious re- 
flection on the character and work of Christ. No 
sincere believer can want to sin. He strives 
against doing so and longs for perfect deliver- 
ance. To say therefore, as some do, that no one 
can keep the law of God and live without com- 
mitting sin is to confess unbelief in the willing- 
ness or ability of Christ. In the former instance, 
his character is impeached. He is made to con- 
sent to a sinning religion because unable to pre- 
vent it; in the latter case the inefficiency of the 
plan of salvation is implied. He is thought of as 
unable to do what He would do in the believer's 
heart and life. The first supposition is disproved 
by the Scriptures that involve the obligation of 
holiness on man's part and the promise of it on 
God's part, as well as by those which show the 
Divine displeasure with sin and delight in holi- 

201 



202 Must the Bible Go 

ness. The second supposition is made impossible 
by the unequivocal declarations of Christ's power 
to save unto the uttermost them that come unto 
God by Him and to cause them to walk in the 
statutes of the Lord by His indwelling Spirit. 

Moreover, the command to be holy is not an 
arbitrary requirement, but springs out of the 
very nature of God. "As He who hath called you 
is holy, so be ye holy in all behavior. Because it 
is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy/' (I Pet. 
1:15-16.) What could more clearly prove that 
God wills the believer's sanctification ? And as His 
commands are His enablings, the failure to real- 
ize this grace is due to unbelief. 

The forgiveness of sin by Jesus Christ is re- 
ceived upon the authority of His word, but the 
transformation of character is an act of power 
that demonstrates the truth of His word and 
glorifies Him before men. "Whether is it easier 
to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be for- 
given thee/ or to say, 'Arise, and take up thy bed, 
and walk?' But that ye may know that the Son of 
Man hath authority on earth to forgive sins," 
(he saith to the sick of the palsy), "I say unto 
thee, Arise and take up thy bed and go thy way 



Must the Bible Go 205 

into thine house." It is the sanctification and 
preservation of the soul in a world of sin that 
magnifies the Son of God. That complete deliver- 
ance should be effected at death, when the battle 
of life is over and there is nothing more to try 
one's faith and engage one's effort, is no such 
manifestation of His greatness as the power that 
cleanses the heart and produces a holy life in the 
midst of the severest besetments and trials of this 
world. What a convincing proof of His authority 
is the example of His power to "destroy the works 
of the devil," and to reproduce His life in mortal 
men! What a testimony to His pre-eminence is 
the experience that can record, "Ye are witnesses, 
and God also, how holily, and justly, and un- 
blameably we behaved ourselves among you that 
believe!" Yet, as Andrew Murray says, "the 
Church believes so little in the mighty power of 
God and the truth of His Holy Covenant, that the 
grace of such heart-holiness is hardly spoken of." 
Said Frederick W. Robertson: "A man whose 
religion is chiefly a sense of pardon does not 
thereby rise into integrity or firmness of char- 
acter. A certain tenderness of character may very 
easily go along with a great deal of subtlety." In 



204 Must the Bible Go 

proportion as a man exhibits a strong, Christ-like 
character is he a walking argument for Chris- 
tianity, and any teaching that prevents his faith 
from rising to the apprehension of such a privi- 
lege and dooms him to the existence that cries, 
"O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death," discredits the fin- 
ished work and resurrection power of Christ and 
is far below the thought of Paul whose shout of 
praise betokened his experience of deliverance: 
"I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord 
.... For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and 
death. For what the law could not do in that it 
was weak through the flesh, God sending His own 
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, con- 
demned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of 
the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after 
the flesh, but after the Spirit." 



206 Must the Bible Go 

"The nearer we approach through critical and 
historical studies to the real Jesus of history, and 
the more closely we succeed in bringing those 
moral teachers who have resembled Him in any 
respects into broad and full comparison with the 
historic Christ, the more we shall find ourselves 
compelled to agree with those officers who had 
been sent to bring Jesus, and who had let Him go 
untouched : 'Never man spake like this man.' " — 
Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics. 

"Who shall deliver us from the hodge-podge 
of the critics, that we may listen again to the 
Voice on the Mount ?" — Rev. Charles Wagner. 

"Our blessed Saviour never speaks of the prin- 
ciple of the Scripture, or the idea of the Scripture, 
of the teaching of Scripture, of the promises of 
the Scripture, of this or that in the Scripture, of 
'the divine element' in the Scripture, as our mod- 
erns would say, or of the Word of God contained 
in the Scripture. He always speaks of the Scrip- 
ture, that body, that written thing, that collection 
of books. ... He argues with the Jews, and 
quotes incidentally a passage from the Psalms. 
He says, in parenthesis, "And the Scripture can- 
not be broken." He does not say "This verse can- 
not be denied," or "The teaching of the Psalms 
cannot be gainsaid;" but simply^ "Because this 
verse is in the Scripture, ipso facto, the Scripture 



Must the Bible Go 207 

stands good for it, and the Scripture cannot be 
broken." — Adolph Saphir, The Divine Unity of 
Scripture. 



CHAPTER XVI 

A DISPARAGED CHRIST. 
HIS AUTHORITY. 

I now take up the point which in a most impor- 
tant sense is decisive of those aspects of the sub- 
ject already noticed, because it concerns the au- 
thoritative character of our Lord's teaching. 

He taught that the Scriptures testified of Him, 
meaning the Old Testament, and urged that men 
should search them, with the view, as the context 
shows, to find Him there. The modern critic 
searches the Scriptures with the view, as sug- 
gested by the fundamental postulates of higher 
criticism, to eliminate Him. His word is not re- 
ceived as authoritative concerning their origin 
and significance. In fact, the manner in which 
the leading critics speak of Him is shocking to the 
intelligence and sensibilities of people who believe 
with Peter that He is "the Anointed One, the Son 
of the living God," and that He has "the words of 
eternal life." Two citations will show the limit to 
which these irreverent critics will go in their as- 

209 



210 Must the Bible Go 

sumption of superiority to the Son of God. In the 
article on the "Old Testament," in Hastings' Bible 
Dictionary, occurs this statement: "Both Christ 
and the Apostles or writers of the New Testa- 
ment held the current Jewish notions respecting 
the Divine authority and revelation of the Old 
Testament." In his book, "The Preacher and the 
Modern Mind," Prof. George Jackson says : "The 
authorship of a particular psalm, the literary 
character of a book of the Old Testament, for ex- 
ample, are not questions that can be determined, 
with all reverence be it said, by the words of Jesus 
himself. The only authority here is the authority 
of facts, and if these are not decisive, nothing re- 
mains but to confess our ignorance." 

Passing over the manner in which the second 
quotation confuses the issue by including "the 
literary character of a book," since Jesus did not 
express an opinion about that, but about the 
authorship of certain writings, what amazes one 
is the dogmatic manner in which it is assumed 
that the conclusions of higher criticism are facts 
and then putting Jesus on trial according to this 
assumption. A thing was not a fact because He 
said it, nor did He say it because it was a fact ! 



Must the Bible Go 211 

Such is the estimate put upon Him by these men 
who then talk of "reverence" and grow self-com- 
placent over their superior scholarship. We think 
the language of Sir Robert Anderson a just char- 
acterization of such "reverence :" 

"How inferior the Christ of these critics is to 
themselves, both in spiritual and natural intelli- 
gence! But the profanity of the words, and the 
folly and conceit which they betoken, will be plain 
to every Christian. What the decoy is to the liber- 
tine, these men are, though unwittingly, to the 
avowed infidel. Just as a pure woman is insid- 
iously trained to hear language and to tolerate sug- 
gestions which in time prepare the way for ad- 
vances of a kind that at first would have excited 
disgust and anger; so the holy and healthy in- 
stincts of the Christian are gradually deadened by 
his becoming accustomed to hear his Divine Lord 
thus patronized and disparaged." 

And how great the contrast to such treatment 
was the spirit which guided one of the great ex- 
positors, the only spirit that becomes a student of 
the Word of God, Dean Alford, who thus closes 
his New Testament commentary: 



212 Must the Bible Go 

"I have now only to commend to my gracious 
God and Father this feeble attempt to explain the 
most mysterious and glorious portion of His re- 
vealed Scriptures; and with it, this my labor of 
now eighteen years, herewith completed. I do so 
with humble thankfulness, but with a sense of 
utter weakness before the power of His Word, 
and inability to sound the depth even of its sim- 
plest sentence. May He spare the hand which 
has been put forward to touch His Ark." 

Such a spirit is as foreign to the critical school 
as heaven is to hell. In the hands of this school 
the Scriptures are subjected to Philistine usage 
and compelled to undergo processes that reduce 
them to the rank of ordinary, fallible literature, 
void of sanctity and authority. The exalted opin- 
ion of Christ who affirmed "the Scripture cannot 
be broken," (not a single line or word, as this 
reference shows) weighs nothing in the critical 
estimate, since He merely inherited the traditions 
of His nation, and was not a scientific investi- 
gator ! But it is certain that the authors of this 
profanation will fare no better than did their re- 
mote progenitors who laid violent hands on the 
Ark of the Lord. The Dagon of higher criticism 



Must the Bible Go 213 

will be found broken in pieces on the floor of its 
temple. A tourist who visited one of the picture 
galleries in Florence said to the aged custodian, 
as he went out, "I do not think much of your pic- 
tures." "Oh," replied the old man, "that does not 
matter, sir ; the pictures are not up for judgment, 
but the visitors are." We can say with equal 
assurance, Jesus Christ is not up for judgment, 
but the critics are. 

Now there were during our Lord's ministry on 
earth the same sorts of people that exist today in 
relation to His word. There were the simple- 
hearted believers to whom the Scriptures, con- 
cealed from the common people by Pharisaical 
perversion and additions, were opened in all their 
original beauty and power by this incomparable 
Teacher. 

The Pharisees who constituted the strongest 
party of opposition to His teaching, were not 
blamed for their belief in the genuineness and 
authenticity of the Scriptures, for Jesus builds 
His argument against their unbelief in Him upon 
this fact. Their fault was failure to appreciate the 
spirit of Scripture, and so overlaying it with false 
interpretations and narrow restrictions as to hide 



214 Must the Bible Go 

the original meaning. Hence when Jesus told 
them that if they had believed Moses, they would 
have believed Him, for Moses wrote of Him, their 
sin was not denying that Moses was the author of 
certain writings, but not believing what those 
writings said concerning the Messiah. On the 
question of authorship, Jesus occupied common 
ground with them. 

The Sadducees were the rationalists and higher 
critics of that day, rejecting the Scriptures as a 
supernatural revelation, and, of course, taking 
issue with the literalism of Jesus. They neither 
accepted the letter of Scripture, for which the 
Pharisees were such sticklers, nor understood its 
spirit. The spiritual teaching of Jesus offended 
them, and though they cared nothing for the 
orthodox party, yet because that teaching im- 
perilled their prospects, equally with those of the 
Pharisees, they joined with the latter in condemn- 
ing Him. 

No doubt both classes talked, as modern 
Sadducees do, of the "shortcomings of Jesus !" 
And they got as little benefit from His word as 
these destructive critics get. Poor, weak, 
ignorant, mistaken Christ, who does not know 



Must the Bible Go 215 

His own mind, whose "shortcomings" necessitate 
correction by modern as well as ancient critics! 
What has he to offer a world groping in darkness 
and oppressed by sin? A fallible teacher cannot 
speak with authority to the race. If he needed 
light himself, he can not be the light of the world. 
If he had "shortcomings," little hope can he bring 
to sinners. If he could not speak the truth con- 
cerning the Scriptures that testify of him, who 
can rely upon his statements concerning himself 
and the nature of his work ? Who can accept with- 
out reservation what he says about sin, his death, 
his resurrection, and his coming again ? In short, 
an incompetent teacher means an incompetent 
Saviour, and we are left without salvation and 
without hope of the future life. This is the log- 
ical result of the critical position. No wonder, 
therefore, that men to whom the word of Christ 
is not sufficient see nothing amiss in the modern 
attempt, in the name of science and under the 
euphemism of "physical research," to revive an- 
cient necromancy and establish commerce with 
the dead. And this tendency will more and more 
prevail if the critical attitude toward the Scrip- 
tures as a final, authoritative revelation from God 



216 Must the Bible Go 

becomes general throughout the Church. Yet still 
for all rings out the solemn warning: "To the law 
and to the testimony; if they speak not according 
to this word, it is because there is no light in 
them/' or as the Revised Version states : "Surely 
there is no morning for them," Isaiah 8:20. 
Awful disappointment ! When men discount the 
Scriptures as a revelation and betake themselves 
to higher criticism or "psychical research" (de- 
scribed hy Scripture as "seeking unto them that 
have familiar spirits and unto the wizards that 
chirp and mutter/' to communicate with "the 
dead"), "there is no morning for them." Instead 
of light, there is "distress and darkness, the gloom 
of anguish, and thick darkness." (V. 22.) What 
seems light to the critic is the deceptive glare of 
"satan transformed into an angel of light," who 
has taken the place of the authoritative Christ. 
The supposed voice of revelation becomes a de- 
moniacal counterfeit. 

But the Christ of Criticism, thank God, is not 
the Christ of the New Testament. He who said, 
"which of you convinceth me of sin?" also said, 
"ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the 
power of God." His "shortcomings" are the vain 



Must the Bible Go 217 

imaginations of Dr. Terry and other learned 
triflers. He is "the Amen, the faithful and true 
witness, the beginning of the creation of God." 
(Rev. 3 :i4.) To say He did not state a fact when 
He attributed certain writings to Moses and Dan- 
iel is to raise the question of His veracity or 
knowledge, that is to say, of His competency to 
be what He claimed to be, the Redeemer as well 
as the authoritative Teacher of mankind; is to 
deny that He is "the Amen, the faithful and true 
witness." 

No doctrine of the Kenosis which involves such 
a disparagement of Christ can be true. It is a con- 
tradiction of ideas to say that deity can empty it- 
self of deity; for this would be self-annihilation. 
He could empty himself of that estate of glory 
"which He had with the Father before the world 
was." It was for the re-investiture of this He 
prayed in the language just quoted. (John 17: 
5.) I think it safe to affirm that certain limita- 
tions marked the period of His humiliation, but 
not of the kind the critics assert. The one solitary 
passage adduced by them (Mark 13 132), cannot 
be taken in a sense that nullifies His positive 
affirmations. For if He disclaimed knowledge of 



218 Must the Bible Go 

that one particular respecting His coming He just 
as positively claimed full knowledge of the fact, 
the manner, and accompanying events of that 
coming. Hence when the critics accept His word 
touching that one item, they are estopped from 
discrediting His teaching about His second com- 
ing by saying He was influenced by Jewish 
apocalyptical beliefs and did not speak the truth 
on that subject. This is to vitiate His entire 
teaching concerning the future life, and leave 
faith no standing ground. Whatever limitations 
He was under were self-imposed, as part of the 
emptying process. If He did not know a thing, it 
was because He chose not to know it; just as, if 
He did not do some things, which God alone can 
do, it was because He chose not to do them. But 
when He chose, He manifested the attribute of 
omnipotence, and when He chose, He displayed 
omniscience; e. g., when He knew what was in 
men's hearts (John 2:24-25, Mark 2:6-8). When, 
in answer to a question of His disciples (Acts 
1 :j) He repeated in different phraseology the 
statement of Mark 13:32, He but emphasized the 
subordination incident to His incarnation with- 
out implying His ignorance in matters whereof 



Must the Bible Go 219 

He affirms knowledge. And the fact that He said 
He did not know in one instance confirms the 
accuracy of His statements in other instances 
when He makes no such denial. He would no 
more leave a false impression in the latter than in 
the former. His perfect candor and honesty were 
the warrant of truth in both cases. Had He been 
ignorant of the authorship of Old Testament 
writings He would not have affirmed that author- 
ship in such positive terms. 

Yet the critics, because the exigencies of a 
hypothesis require it, set aside His positive state- 
ments as the utterances of an ignorant man who 
merely adopted and confirmed the error of His 
time ! In what sense, upon this theory, can He be 
regarded as an authority to the men of that or of 
any age ? But it has been shown how preposterous 
as well as dishonoring to Christ is this sugges- 
tion. He never deferred to the opinions of men 
and more than once offended or astonished them 
by His independence and originality. "Never 
man spake like this man," they said; or, "they 
were astonished at His teaching, for He taught 
them as one having authority, and not as the 
scribes." And, as Dr. A. T. Pierson has pointed 



220 Must the Bible Go 

out, in reproving those who rejected His Mes- 
sianic view of the Scriptures He indicated, in 
less than fifty words, "the whole trend of modern 
rationalistic criticism. It is one of the most re- 
markable forecasts which the Word of God con- 
tains. He said: Tor had ye believed Moses, ye 
would have believed Me ; for he wrote of Me. But 
if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe 
My words?' (John 5:46-47.) And He subse- 
quently said 'If they hear not Moses and the 
prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though 
one rose from the dead' (Luke 16:31). Here the 
exact trend of rationalistic criticism was indi- 
cated nearly two thousand years ago ; for it began 
in disputing the authenticity of Moses' writings ; 
then it went on from that to dispute the inspira- 
tion of the prophets ; then it passed on to question 
the authenticity and infallibility of the words of 
Christ and now it is disputing as to whether He 
even rose from the dead ! Our Lord thus gave us, 
prophetically, the whole drift of this irreverent 
criticism, showing where it would begin and 
where it would end." (The Bible and Spiritual 
Criticism.) 



Must the Bible Go 221 

It ends, as we have seen, in such a God-dis- 
honoring estimate of Jesus as is suggested by 
what the critics term His "shortcomings;" by 
their belief that they are better able to speak with 
certainty and accuracy regarding the Old Testa- 
ment than He of whom the Voice from the clouds 
said : 'This is My beloved Son in whom I am well 
pleased; hear ye Him." 

Accordingly we hear Him when He speaks, for 
example, of the writings of Moses, David, Isaiah, 
Daniel, and Jonah and believe what he says of 
them. We believe that Moses wrote what Christ 
attributed to him, though the critics say the writ- 
ing was by some unknown who lived centuries 
after Moses. YYe believe David wrote the Psalm 
Jesus says he did when He quotes the passage 
in proof of His Godhead. We believe there was 
only one prophet named Isaiah and that he is the 
author of the part which the critics assign to an 
anonymous scribe, though Christ quotes from it 
as Isaiah's. We believe Daniel was the author of 
the book bearing his name because Christ affirmed 
his authorship. We believe the story of Jonah to 
be authentic because Christ sealed its historical 
validity by His own affirmation. 



222 Must the Bible Go 

While this is not the only reason we believe 
these things, it is enough for our faith. We be- 
lieve where the critics deny, because the Father 
has said, "Hear Him," and because He is infi- 
nitely more worthy of credence that His critics. 
At the same time we are glad to stand with all 
reverent scholars who find in archaeology, his- 
tory, and true spiritual criticism abundant con- 
firmation of the words of "the True and Faithful 
Witness," while they note the subjectivism and 
hostility to Divine revelation which have char- 
acterized higher criticism. 

As an instance of such hostility, it may be men- 
tioned, that the attack on the integrity of Daniel 
began with a repudiation of the miraculous in- 
cidents of the book. Other reasons were then 
sought, but they have been shown by able think- 
ers to be superficial and untenable. It is enough, 
to quote Keil, that "the testimony of our Lord 
fixes the seal of Divine confirmation on the exter- 
nal and internal evidences which prove the gen- 
uineness of the book." 

The case of Jonah is, perhaps, the most striking 
illustration of emptying the words of Christ of all 
rational content chargeable to a false criticism. 



Must the Bible Go 223 

Nineveh, situated upon a navigable river com- 
municating with the Euphrates river and the 
Persian gulf, doubtless formed "one of the great 
trading stations between that important inland 
sea and Syria and the Mediterranean, and must 
have become a depot for the merchandise supplied 
to a great part of Asia Minor, Armenia, and 
Persia." (McClintock & Strong.) Phoenician 
ships went everywhere, carrying the produce of 
Assyria and Egypt, as well as their own wares 
and manufactures. Nothing could be more prob- 
able, therefore, than that on the very ship which 
carried Jonah were some Ninevite as well as 
Phoenician sailors, who revered the fish-god, and 
that they told the story of the storm at sea and of 
the fate of Jonah, whose subsequent ejection 
from the mouth of the great fish may have be- 
come known to them before his journey to Nine- 
veh. Dr. W. M. Thompson thinks Jonah may 
have "carried with him, or there had preceded 
him, such well-authenticated proofs of his won- 
derful preservation in the whale's belly as deeply 
alarmed the Ninevites, on whose account, in an 
important and portentous sense, the miracle had 
been wrought. Nor is it difficult to discover how 



224 Must the Bible Go 

such reports would have been spread abroad. 
The sailors of the ship could testify that they 
threw Jonah overboard in a tempestuous sea; 
very likely they saw him swallowed by the great 
fish. They would, therefore, be immensely 
amazed to find him on shore, alive and well. 
Such a thing would now make a prodigious noise 
in the world, and the news of it would fly from 
city to city with incredible speed. There is no 
reason to doubt, therefore, that the story of the 
prophet had preceded him to Nineveh, and pre- 
pared the way for the success of his preaching." 
(The Land and the Book, vol. i., page ioo.) 

There can hardly be a question that the knowl- 
edge of the mighty works of Jehovah in the his- 
tory of His people Israel, ruling the forces of 
nature, confounding false gods, and overwhelm- 
ing nations that stood opposed to His will, had 
spread throughout the countries to the east of 
Palestine. And when, under all these circum- 
stances, the prophet as the representative of the 
living God, went through the city uttering his 
ominous prediction, alarm seized upon the king 
and people and produced the universal repentance 
described in the book. Such religious fasts were 



Must the Bible Go 225 

not unknown in that empire. Figures of the fish- 
god have been discovered among Assyrian ruins, 
indicating that it must have had some kind of 
place in the national pantheon. Hence the report 
of Jonah's strange experience would lay hold 
upon the imagination of the Ninevites and make 
his preaching irresistible. 

Now that these disclosures of ancient history 
would emphasize the sign of Jonah's appearance 
in Nineveh as a orophet, thus investing the sacred 
narrative with the suggestion of reality, has little 
weight with men who have a theory to maintain. 
The havoc which the theory plays with the lan- 
guage of Christ, should, however, open the eyes 
of many to its irreconcilability with faith in Him. 

Here again the miraculous element of the book 
was the first point of attack. Then the book be- 
came a parable, full of good teaching, like the 
parables of the Gospel, and in this sense a praise- 
worthy production. The reference of Christ was 
held not to be an expression of its historical char- 
acter, but simply the use of an illustration, like 
other parables. Unfortunately for the theory, 
Christ's use of the story necessitates fact and a1> 
solutely excludes the idea of fiction. Some of the 



226 Must the Bible Go 

scribes and of the Pharisees asked Him for a sign. 
He answered: "An evil and adulterous genera- 
tion seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign 
be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet, 
for as Jonah was three days and three nights in 
the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be 
three days and three nights in the heart of the 
earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the 
judgment with this generation and shall condemn 
it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; 
and behold a greater than Jonah is here."* 

Observe, they asked for a sign, not an illustra- 
tion merely, and Jesus said they should have a 
sign, namely his death and resurrection. What 
Jonah's experience being in the whale and coming 
out of it alive was to the Ninevites, Christ's burial 
and resurrection would be to the men of His gen- 
eration. Now fiction in the former case would be 
utterly incongruous with fact in the latter. It may 
teach lessons, but can not be a sign of anything. 
Only a fact can be a sign. 

Would not Christ be a trifler to say the Nine- 
vites had a sign, when, according to this theory, 
they had nothing of the kind? Trifling, too, 
would have been the statement that his resurrec- 



Must the Bible Go 227 

tion would be a sign, if He never arose from the 
grave. No spirit manifestation would have an- 
swered, as modern unbelief would have it. He 
told His disciples He was to be crucified and rise 
the third day. It was a bodily crucifixion and 
therefore a bodily resurrection. Nothing else 
would have convinced them. Hence His positive 
assurance: "Handle me and see; a spirit hath 
not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." 

The men of Nineveh were real facts; so was 
Jonah, as well as the other persons and events of 
this context. The grave of Christ was an indis- 
putable fact ; so was His rising out of the grave. 
This was a sign to His contemporaries. There- 
fore, the whale's belly and Jonah's ejection there- 
from alive, which were paralleled with His own 
experience, must have been facts. He declared 
they were facts. To deny this is to impeach His 
authority and reduce to absurdity His statement 
of similiarity between these experiences. 

Dr. David James Burrell, the able preacher, 
has exposed the infidelity of those who dispute 
the reality of the record concerning Jonah and 
the great fish in words that must elicit the hearty 
amen of all who believe Jesus taught the truth. 



228 Must the Bible Go 

"In his reference to this narrative," he says, "our 
Lord did not only signify his assent to its truth, 
but he adventured the validity of His redemptive 
work upon it. As his resurrection was to be the 
seal of His atonement, so the truth of the Jonah 
narrative was a sign of His resurrection. Had 
He regarded it as a mere folklore, He could not 
have made such use of it. We do not use fables 
as guarantees of fact. Try it in a court of justice. 
'As surely as Jason sought and found the Golden 
Fleece, so surely I will tell the truth.' That would 
scarcely answer. You must certify by an indubit- 
able fact like this: 'As surely as there is a God 
in heaven I will tell the truth !' Or try it in a com- 
mon matter like the contract for a debt ; make out 
your note on this wise : 'By the sign of Jack and 
the Beanstalk, or of Cinderella and her Crystal 
Slipper, I promise to pay when this obligation 
falls due/ Does this seem preposterous? It is not 
a whit more preposterous than to allege that 
Jesus referred to the 'fable' of Jonah when called 
upon to produce a sign in verification of His own 
claims as the only begotten Son of God. 

Is it not a remarkable fact, that the very por- 
tions of Scripture which have been most vigor- 



Must the Bible Go 229 

ously assailed and held up to ridicule by destruc- 
tive critics are those which Jesus marked with His 
authoritative seal of approval. Verily it looks as 
if He anticipated the things that are happening 
in these days ! And in a clash of opinion between 
Jesus, as the champion of the Divine Word, and 
all who oppose it, there is no room for hesitation 
on the part of those who sincerely follow Him; 
they will be found standing with Him." 

The case of Jonah and the fish will serve to 
illustrate the critical attitude toward Jesus as an 
authority in matters wherein His statements are 
contrary to modern views. If he builds an argu- 
ment for His Divinity upon a Scripture which 
He affirmed David said by the Holy Spirit 
(Psalm no: i, Mark 12:36), the critics say, "Not 
so; we can no longer accept the word of Jesus 
about such things. David never said that, and 
the Holy Spirit never inspired it." If the state- 
ment of Jesus is unreliable, the passage was 
neither inspired nor authentic, for He affirmed 
both. Well might He say, "Ye call me Lord, 
Lord, but where is mine honor ?" 

This derogation from His honor extends to 
almost every phase of His teaching. He taught 



230 Must the Bible Go 

not as "one having authority/' as His contemp- 
oraries claimed He did, not as one who knew His 
subject and spoke the truth; but as one equally 
ignorant with other men who have not specialized 
in critical studies ! The trouble with such special- 
ization is that it possesses neither the scientific 
nor the Christian spirit. It is as irrational as it 
is godless. If the specializer does not think the 
character of Christ entitles His utterances to be 
received at their face value, there is nothing in 
his study of Scripture that merits the designation 
of either fairness or reasonableness. Why, for 
illustration, pose as loyal disciples of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, as the editors of certain Sunday 
School publications do, when their own explana- 
tions contradict His plain statements. When He 
healed the woman with crooked back He said 
Satan had bound her. No, run the notes of the 
Berean Quarterly ; this was just the notion of the 
people then living. He affirmed in an eschato- 
logical discourse that a flood swept the ungodly 
away in the days of Noah. The critics deny His 
affirmation and hence nullify His application of 
this reference to His second coming. Such in- 
stances could be multiplied. 



Must the Bible Go 231 

What will be the end of this treatment of 
Christ? Anti-Christ. The higher criticism is 
one of the most potent forces now preparing the 
Church and the world for the coming of the Man 
of Sin who will usurp the place of the Son of God 
and inaugurate a reign of lawlessness. Reject- 
ing or neutralizing the authority of Christ by 
disputing the plain meaning of His words con- 
cerning the Scriptures and His own works log- 
ically and actually ends in uncertainty and un- 
belief in everything. And I can not do better in 
bringing this line of thought to a close than to 
quote the remarks of Handley C. G. Moule, D. D., 
Bishop of Durham, taken from his preface to 
Sir Robert Anderson's work, The Bible and 
Modern Criticism. He says : 

"The attitude towards Holy Scripture of a vast 
deal of cultured thought and responsible teaching 
at present offers assuredly a problem which it is 
idle to dismiss as if it were not portentous. By 
whatever process it has come to be, teachers and 
disciples far and wide now regard the Old Testa- 
ment (to speak of it only for the instant) from 
an angle totally different (I use the words de- 
liberately) from that taken by our Lord Jesus 



232 Must the Bible Go 

Christ, alike before and after His Resurrection 
from the dead. To Him, tempted, teaching, suf- 
fering, dying, risen, 'it is written' was a formula 
of infinite import. The principle this expressed 
lay at the heart of His teaching. It is not too 
much to say that it belonged to the pulse, to the 
vital breath, of His message to others, and what 
is mysteriously yet more, to His certainty about 
Himself. But in wide circles of our Christendom 
it is now openly or tacitly taken to be out of date, 
to be narrow, to be uncultured, to make much of 
'it is written;' as if an appeal to a definite super- 
natural book-revelation were a thing discredited 
and to be given up. 

"If a severe necessity of irrefragable truth de- 
mands this, be it so. But let not the conclusion 
be reached, or rested in, light-heartedly, and 
smoothly decorated with the comfortable phrase- 
ology current in articles and reviews. The con- 
clusion, if true, is portentous. It is a confession 
that on a matter central in His message our 
Master was much mistaken. He appears thus as 
not merely capable of nescience; that is a very 
different matter; the most cautious, the most 
worshiping, theology may hold that He con- 



Must the Bible Go 233 

sented, in His humanity, to limitations of His 
conscious knowledge and to silence outside those 
bounds. But here He appears as ignorant with 
that sort of ignorance which profoundly impairs 
the whole value of a teacher — the ignorance of 
the man who does not know where his knowledge 
ends, and so makes confident inferences, where 
his basis as to facts is unsound. 

"Such a fallible Christ lies open to the sus- 
picion of fallibility on other matters than the 
nature and integrity of the Old Testament; and 
reasonably. The theology which denies the Lord 
abnormal knowledge of the facts of the past is 
only consistent when it extends its denial to the 
future, and takes cum grano the New Testament 
doctrine of His return, which is a matter either 
of revelation, or of the vaguest and most impal- 
pable forecast. Such extensions have un- 
doubtedly come to be freely made within Chris- 
tian circles : and not only in the Encyclopedia 
Biblica. 

"If these conclusions be demanded by irrefut- 
able fact, let them be made, and accepted. But 
not, I repeat, light-heartedly, and as if we were 
the freer for them, and could talk glibly about 



234 Must the Bible Go 

them in the best modern style. Let us make them 
with a groan, and take care to carve no more 
the unauthentic promise on the tombs of our be- 
loved. 

"But first let us be absolutely sure that our de- 
traction from the complete infallibility of the 
Lord Jesus Christ has infallible grounds. Let 
us take particular care to be sure that its basis 
is no a priori theory of the genesis of Religion, 
which may even already be on its way to discredit 
in the court of knowledge and thought." 



*As the discussion deals only with Christ's au- 
thority in relation to the story of Jonah, there is 
no call for any statement of scientific fact. But 
since the critical objection denies the wisdom and 
power of God as well as the authority of Christ, 
it seems good to present a few facts to silence the 
gainsaying of foolish men. 

It was the extraordinary character of the mir- 
acle recorded in the book of Jonah that set the 
critical mind against its authenticity. But this is 
a difficulty only for unbelief, whose ideas of pos- 
sibility are restricted to the narrowest limits. The 
essence of all unbelief is limiting God. What 
with the wonderful dispensational and typical 
teaching of this book (teaching that would be 



Must the Bible Go 235 

lost, upon the theory that the work is fiction ; for 
types are facts before they are illustrations, and 
dispensations cannot rise out of parables), there 
was reason for such history. What with infinite 
wisdom and power, there was the possibility of 
its occurrence. 

The narrative states that God "prepared a great 
fish to swallow Jonah. ,, Frank Bullen, who had 
much experience at sea, writes of the capture of a 
huge sperm whale which, when dying, ejected the 
contents of its stomach. "The ejected food was 
in masses of enormous size, larger than any we 
had yet seen on the voyage, some of them being 
estimated to be the size of the hatch-house, viz - , 
eight feet by six feet into six feet." (Cruise of 
the Cachalot.) This mass of food in its entirety 
was two feet longer than a tall man, and equal 
in breadth and thickness to the bodies of six 
heavy men rolled into one. (See the New Bib- 
lical Guide of Urquhart, vol. vii., p. 132, from 
which this account is taken.) 

There are many kinds of whales, and every 
one of them, it is said, with the exception of the 
Greenland whale, has a gullet in proportion to 
its size. 

Moreover, as Professor Macloskie of Prince- 
ton, has shown, the structure of the whale is such 
that if some air-breathing animal "should get 
mixed with the whale food by being shipwrecked 



238 Must the Bible Go 

or by some other accident, and be carried by the 
influx of water between the monster's jaws, this 
accident must immediately rescue the intruding 
air-breather from death, because the intruder 
should find itself transferred from the water in 
which it was drowning into the air supply of the 
whale itself." The air pouch "has thick, elastic 
walls, and a cavity abundantly large to receive a 
human body, and to supply it with air for breath- 
ing/' Professor Macloskie suggests that the 
pouch of the mother whale may serve the pur- 
pose of sheltering her offspring at times, com- 
parably with the mother kangaroo, which uses 
her marsupial pouch for the protection of her 
young. 

Nor are these the only illustrations of God's 
creative power to confound the reasoning of 
higher critics. A monster fish was caught by 
Captain Thompson, in June, 1912, in the vicinity 
of Knights Keys, Florida, which required five 
harpoons and one hundred and fifty bullets to 
subdue it, and which then lived several days. In 
its struggle it smashed a boat into pieces and 
crushed the rudder and propeller of a thirty-one 
ton yacht. It weighed thirty thousand pounds, 
was 45 feet in length, nearly 24 feet in circumfer- 
ence, more than 8 feet in diameter. Its mouth 
(open) was 31 inches, 28 inches wide, 43 inches 
deep. An animal weighing fifteen hundred 



Must the Bible Go 237 

pounds was found in its stomach. One writer 
says that one of the animals taken from the mon- 
ster lived seven days after its removal. 

What now becomes of the claim of critics that 
the story of Jonah and the whale is absurd ? This 
is no romance. Men of great repute who saw 
the monster have certified to the genuineness of 
the curiosity. The critics must be left to their 
own reflections. 



238 Must the Bible Go 



"I trust Thee, not to the third day, not to the 
Easter dawn, but to the end of time. 

"Thy day cometh — that sufficeth me. It is my 
calm in unrest, my light in the dark, my consola- 
tion in distress and defeat. 

"I have been led to Thee by the flower of the 
fields, by the star of the skies, by the voice of the 
Prophets and the Gospel, by the radiance from 
the obscurity of the humble, as from the brow of 
the Heroic and the Just. But henceforth Thou 
hast no more need of witnesses or of fresh proofs. 

"It is on Thee alone that I believe, in Three that 
I would have my assurance for Life, for Death, for 
Eternity/' — Charles Wagner, The Better Way. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE INDISPENSABLE CHRIST. 

The moral necessity of Christ to man has re- 
ceived no stronger affirmation than that which 
the experience of unbelief has sometimes wrung 
from the lips of thoughtful sceptics. The denial 
of Christianity produces a sort of mental intoxica- 
tion, under the influence of which men imagine 
that a new era of social freedom and progress 
has begun. But alas! the day of disillusionment 
comes when, sobered by the evil effects of such 
denial, they view the nature and claims of 
Christianity with clearer judgment. They are 
compelled to own its divinity and power as the 
means of social regeneration and conservation. 
Christ is seen to be indispensable to the soul and 
its social habitation. They confess to the utter 
inadequacy of reason to save the individual and 
make society what it ought to be. Their hearts 
protest against the hasty conclusions of their 
misguided intellects. There is an aching void 
which the negations of unbelief only intensify. 

239 



240 Must the Bible Go 

They find at last the way of relief pointed out 
by the ancient Scripture — "In returning and rest 
shall ye be saved. ,, 

As an instance of this recovery of faith take 
the conversion of Professor Romanes, the scien- 
tist. How pathetic his frank confession that he 
was not happy in his position of unbelief, that 
"instead of the God of the universe, in whom he 
had believed as a boy, there seemed now nothing 
but a great big empty hole." This was almost 
the language of Prof. Clifford, another noted 
atheist, who yet was serious enough to realize 
the catastrophe of such an experience: "We feel 
that the Great Companion is dead." Prof. 
Romanes' conversion was simply a return to the 
faith of his childhood, but through the conviction 
that his reasoning had been fallacious. His case 
is proof that the fault of scepticism is reasoning 
from partial premises. When all the facts are 
lined up, reason at once declares for Christianity, 
and the heart utters its glad Amen. 

Another example of sober inquiry and frank 
avowal of belief in the indispensableness of 
Christianity was that of the French writer and 



Must the Bible Go 241 

disciple of Renan, M. Paul Bourget, who said 
some years ago : 

"As for me this long inquiry into the moral 
diseases of the France of today has constrained 
me to recognize that for the individual as well 
as for society, Christianity is the absolute condi- 
tion of health and recovery." 

Lavredan, a French author, converted by re- 
flections upon the present terrible struggle of his 
nation for existence, closes a statement concern- 
ing the loss of his unbelief with the words : "A 
slain people covers the fields. How hard it is to 
be an atheist in this national graveyard! I can- 
not ! I cannot ! I have deceived myself and you 
who have read my books and sung my songs !" 

Professor Abelous, the physiologist, said at 
the Sorbonne before an audience of professors 
and medical students, "Science is neither moral 
nor immoral. They are Utopian who seek to use 
it for ends which do not belong to it. A morality 
cannot be established if it leaves the religious 
sentiment out of consideration. As far as mor- 
ality is concerned, the supreme word does not 
belong to science but to Christ, whose immortal 
words of hope and love will never pass away." 



242 Must the Bible Go 

Even more fervent and personal is the testi- 
mony borne by M. Pierre Loti, in his book, 
"Jerusalem." Profoundly impressed by the de- 
votion of the worshipers at the Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre, he exclaims: 

"Oh, to believe; Oh, to pray, when the end is 
near, as these do. For Christ, whatever men may 
think and whatever men may do, is the Unique. 
He is the One that cannot be explained. And at 
this moment, however strange it may appear com- 
ing from me, I would say to my friends who have 
followed me thus far, "Seek ye Him ; try to find 
Him — for outside of Him there is nothing." 

Listen now to the voice of one from the land 
that has debauched the faith of Christendom by 
its assaults upon the integrity of the Bible. His 
awakening is an illustration of the inadequacy of 
the new theology and higher criticism to meet 
the crises of life and satisfy the demands of the 
soul. The awful European war is doubtless a 
judgment upon the nations that have forsaken 
the God of Revelation for the Devil of rational- 
ism, and will, it is hoped, awaken the whole 
Church to the nature of the obsession. 



Must the Bible Go 243 

The voice is that of Pastor Haecker, of the 
Luther Church, Berlin, who about a year ago 
abandoned the liberal faction in the State Church 
to which he was formerly attached. A quotation 
from an address on his "Return to the Old Gos- 
pel," will emphasize these remarks : 

"Why have I not tried 'the new gospel* longer 
— the gospel without the incarnate God, without 
the death sacrifice of God's love, without the res- 
urrection of the Lord? Because I sought life 
and full satisfaction and did not find this in 
modern theology. As pastor, I was called not 
only to weddings, but to deathbeds and funerals. 
There I could offer no fine words on the value of 
the life which was vanishing, of the virtues of 
the dead, concerning which I was not convinced. 
No, at such times I needed to say that One had 
cried aloud over this world of graves : T live, and 
ye shall live also.' The modern man must be 
loved, but not with false concessions; loved as 
God has ever loved — with Cross-love. He must 
be loved with the old Gospel, which is the truth. 
Therefore, we must abandon half-way comprom- 
ises. We must bring the message, not of great 



244 Must the Bible Go 

men who are dead, but of the Son of God Who 
lives." 

Of like comprehension were the words of the 
statesman, W. E. Gladstone, who wrote: "All I 
write, and all I think, and all I hope, is based 
upon the divinity of our Lord, the one central 
hope of our poor, wayward race." 

Noble is the confession of faith by Max Muller, 
the eminent philologist : "In the course of a long 
life, in pain and sin and grief and desertion, in 
loneliness, in injustice and disappointments which 
have overtaken me, Jesus Christ has given me a 
strength and rest which nothing else can equal. 
And in all the great unknown that is in store for 
the future nothing can I endure or do except in 
His spirit, under His leading." 

Incomparable Being, of whom it is written, 
"His name shall be called Wonderful !" Who of 
all the children of men that have heard that name, 
would not bear witness to its sweetness and 
power? Who that has felt the weight of the 
mysteries of existence and longed for the sure 
word of hope and comfort, but, having learned 
of Him, has uttered the passionate cry of Peter, 
"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the 



Must the Bible Go 245 

words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure 
that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God." Note the testimony of that devil-priest in 
India, when the Spirit of God opened his under- 
standing to the teaching of Jesus: "I saw the 
horror of my past and the mercy of the Christ 
who had redeemed me by His love. I believed 
what He said, that to enter the Kingdom of 
Heaven, a man must be born again. I knew that 
my sins would cling to me, in spite of my faith in 
the living God, unless I was converted and be- 
came as a little child. I saw, too, that it would 
be of little use for me to preach faith in a living 
God to my people, when what they needed was 
repentance of their sins and liberation through 
the love of Christ. I felt how true, how true, was 
this teaching of my Lord." 

Blessed be His name ! Our faith is not a vain 
thing. We know Whom we have believed, and 
therefore know what is real, and can say from 
the heart, with the gentle Whittier ; 



246 Must the Bible Go 

"No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
Nor dream of bards and seers, 
No dead fact stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years ; 

But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 

A present help is He ; 
And faith has still its Olivet 

And love its Galilee. 

The healing of His seamless dress 

Is by our beds of pain; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press, 

And we are whole again. 

Through Him the first fond prayers are said 

Our lips in childhood frame, 
The last low whispers of our dead 

Are burdened with His name. 

O Lord and Master of us all, 

Whate'er our name or sign, 
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, 

We test our lives by Thine." 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2005 

PreservationTechnoiogies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



